Since the rise in muralism in the late 2000s, street art portraiture has become an increasingly popular form of urban expression, with artists employing diverse techniques and styles to capture the essence of individuals and personalities.
This street art genre draws inspiration from western portrait painting and contemporary advertising practices, combining traditional and modern elements. Beyond a simple aesthetic exercise, some street art portraiture has emerged as a means for artists to challenge dominant societal norms surrounding notions of beauty and power dynamics, making it a vital mode of cultural expression. Other times, obvious norms are in full embrace.
While the issue of the male gaze has been a prevalent topic in the fine arts for centuries, street art gave a new platform for artists to consider and sometimes debate this issue in a public forum. Artists celebrate real and fictional individuals of all genders, challenging traditional ideas of beauty and reclaiming agency for those traditionally relegated to the margins. By doing so, these artists engage in a larger cultural dialogue, and through their work, reflect the diversity and values of the communities they inhabit.
A high percentage are celebrities and icons of popular culture. From musicians to actors and athletes, these individuals make the artwork personal, relatable, and Instagrammable. Younger artists tend to gravitate toward contemporary figures in popular culture, while older artists may focus on historical or political figures. But don’t quote us on that.
From stenciling, painting, and wheat pasting, each method contributes to the unique character of the artwork, reflecting the artist’s vision and the cultural landscape in which it is created. As a mirror to the culture, the subjects chosen for street art portraiture can reflect the diversity and cultural landscape of the city, creating a visual representation of the community, its values, and aspirations.
64% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, China and Russia are buddying up, BRICs countries are looking for new members, and the Bankers in your life are again looking toward their gilded escape bunkers.
We are transfixed by the first indicted US president, and gloating about having a system of democracy and justice. Now he is positioning himself as an “outsider,” a martyr. A billionaire outsider. We’re just waiting for these crowds outside Trump Tower to materialize. Where are they? Honestly, Fifth Avenue is more interested in the Easter Bonnet Parade that is coming.
But it’s a circus on the national tabloid news, which is unfortunately all of the news now. Our best minds are being entertained by 24 hour sports channels, Netflix and Tic Toc, and it’s not an accident. People are chided into fighting each other over trans-woke-snowflake-abortion-race-laptop-AR15-centered-drag-readings. Look! A squirrel!
Meanwhile, the daffodils are blooming everywhere in anticipation of Easter Week. People were cramming subways, buses, and sidewalks yesterday because of the warm sunny spring weather – and Smorgasborg opened this weekend in Brooklyn. NYTimes calls it “the Woodstock of eating,” due to its variety of incredible food choices – but of course, you can have just as much fun with a bag of chips or a slice of pizza sitting on a stoop watching the parade of New Yorkers march/sashay/stride by.
We had a great time at the Bronx Museum yesterday, catching the John Ahearn/ Rigoberto Torres retrospective and seeing both the artists in person during a panel discussion with artist Abigail DeVille – with fans rushing the stage for an autographed exhibition book afterward. These guys have championed everyday New Yorkers through their painted sculptures for four decades. It is revelatory and heartwarming to see this very large collection of works never shown together before. Make sure to check out “Swagger and Tenderness: The South Bronx Portraits” until April 30.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Stikman, Zimer, Subway Doodle, A Lucky Rabbit, Qzar, Optimo NYC, Sekt, AMMO, CEYNYC, Toeflop, Early Riser NYC, Julia Cocuzza, and Miki Mu.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Minerva Cuevas in “Mexico City” – Season 8 / Art21
2. Nick Cave in “Chicago” – Season 8 / Art21
3. Damián Ortega in “Mexico City” – Season 8 / Art21
BSA Special Feature: Mexico City and Chicago Artists in Their Own Words Via Art 21
Today’s edition of BSA Film Friday presents three short films from ART21/Artists in Their Own Words Series, “Art in the Twenty-First Century.” Two artists from Mexico City, Minerva Cuevas, and Damian Ortega, and one artist from Chicago, Nick Cave, tell us about their work, how they come around to it, how they understand it and execute it. The series illustrates well how artists often find the inspiration to continue doing their craft and to stay true to their philosophy and core principles.
Minerva Cuevas in “Mexico City” – Season 8 / Art21
Minerva Cuevas is a socially conscious artist who uses her work to respond to political events and spark change, in sometimes idiosyncratic ways. Her art includes sculptures and paintings that bring attention to issues like world hunger and the negative impact humans have on animals and the environment. She also creates mini-sabotages, like altering grocery store bar codes and making student IDs, to support her non-profit organization, Better Life Corporation. Through her art and activism, Cuevas is mapping out resistance and promoting a world where all living beings are valued.
Nick Caves in “Chicago” – Season 8 / Art21
Here’s Nick Cave – not the musician, but the artist who creates unique sculptures called “Soundsuits.” These suits began as a response to the Rodney King beatings, but have now become a tool for empowerment in ways beyond what he may have imagined. The suits completely cover the body and are designed to obscure the wearer’s race, gender, and class, allowing people to see the suit without any bias toward the person inside. Nick Cave himself often performs in the suits in front of a live audience – or for the camera. They are more than just costumes – they also become musical instruments and symbols of living art; including assemblages of found objects that project out from the wall, and installations that fill entire rooms.
Damián Ortega in “Mexico City” – Season 8 / Art21
Damián Ortega creates amazing sculptures using objects from his everyday life, including things like Volkswagen Beetle cars, Day of the Dead posters, and locally sourced corn tortillas. Arranging these objects in precise ways, often suspended from the ceiling or part of a mechanical system, Ortega creates sculptures that look like diagrams, solar systems, words, buildings, and even faces. The stories are mythic, in cosmic scale – and told through performance, sculpture, and film.
BLU re-creates his mural from 2009 and gives the neighborhood of Carmel, in Barcelona, Spain reasons to be overwhelmed with joy.
The internationally known and respected muralist, street artist, and activist, Italian painter BLU worked intensely for one month with the producer, B-Murals to recreate this 70 meter mural (about 230 feet). The new Tauró del Carmel neighborhood mural is on the same wall and street where he had painted the original back in 2009 on calle Santuari.
It is a series of sharks, the first one pure capitalism, the second the bastardized evil form of war profiteering that currently rules the nation, the third the impact of both on the body politic, the institutions, the formation of society, and the impact on the ecology. Blu retains integrity throughout, and this neighborhood appears rejuvenated.
When the original mural had to be painted over by the municipality in 2001 for safety reasons due to the wall being in bad shape, the residents in the neighborhood were in disbelief when they found out that they had not only lost a monumental piece of art but also a well known and loved landmark instantly recognized by the locals as a point of reference, for directions or simply on a mutually agreed meeting spot.
Working together with the community, local authorities, and B-Murals, BLU began working on this project with purpose and intensity with the idea of giving his new Shark an interpretation that is both current, timely and of time.
As a starting point, BLU kept the original design, the shark with the Euro bill, a commentary on capitalism run amok, greed, banks and corporations ever hungry for more profits at any cost. From there, he proceeded to paint a colossal story with images about the most urgent, pressing and, topical issues affecting our world today: Wars, the military-industrial complex, the environment, the intensity of natural disasters made more dangerous and devastating by global warming, and the imminent dislocation of entire societies due to the degeneration of natural habitats and the lack of natural resources for these communities to continue living in their lands.
With this new mural by BLU, and many others produced by B-Murals under the Carmel Mossega Project, and in conjunction with the municipal authorities, the residents of Carmel will again find their attachment to this piece of art; they know that it belongs to them as all street art should be for the people.
Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico has what may be called a thriving graffiti and street art scene – growing significantly over the past decade. Many local and international artists have gained recognition and support from local authorities, who have sponsored large-scale murals and other public art projects throughout the city.
With a growing middle-class thanks to the large number of international maquiladoras that have taken root, you even can see skateparks and bike parks where none existed previously. On a typical sunny weekday, you will see kids wearing helmets getting out of family SUVs to hang with friends and try new tricks – in an environment that is wholly smashed with graffiti burners and pieces. And the quality of the artwork is impressive.
The growth of the graffiti and street art scene in Chihuahua can also be attributed to the city’s strong cultural identity and history and the rich tradition of muralism and public art in Mexico dating back to the early 20th century when artists like Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros were creating large-scale murals across the country. In recent years, the city has seen a new wave of street artists and graffiti writers emerge, inspired by the legacy of these earlier artists and by global trends in urban art.
“Mais agencés en ballet subtil par FAITH XLVII, il nous fait aussi prendre conscience de notre dérisoire et pourtant précieuse divinité.”
The South African graffiti writer, muralist, and contemporary urban artist has traveled the world extensively and worked tirelessly to develop her milieu, her point of view, and her own spectacular visual language over the last two decades plus. Now her exhibition C/air-Obscur at Musée des Beaux-Arts will present forty works – drawings, tapestries, polaroids, videos, and multimedia installations that are the results of her experimentation and exploration on two levels of the gallery.
A research on shadow and light. About nature. About our behavior. The conscious and the subconscious. Connection and dissonance. The inner world and the outer world,” she says. “The phases of the moon ranging from fullness to absence. Creativity and responsiveness. Sound and silence. An interdependence of the two.”
It is a show that brings you the artist in her fullness, as she has grown creatively to embrace many disciplines and many routes of internal discovery and being. The exhibition will be familiar and new in its pursuits over two levels. “The C/air-Obscur exhibition is structured in two planes,” she explains, “mixing darkness and light in equal parts, from a bright space on the ground floor dedicated to virulent drawings to a dark space upstairs presenting mysterious and paradoxically soothing videos.”
‘You see I want a lot Maybe I want it all; The darkness of each endless fall. The shimmering light of each ascent.’ Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of a Monk’s Life, 1899
MUSEE DES BEAUX-ARTS DE NANCY
3, place Stanislas
54000 Nancy
Faith XLVII Clair – Obscur at the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Nancy, France opens to the general public on April 9th, 2023.
When securing a free-for-all approach to assault rifles via the 2nd Amendment, you will find an endless stream of people arguing for it on right-wing radio and television these days. The messages all seem mixed, however, and many are fueled by a righteous no-holds-barred rage that disparages thoughtful discussion and considered opinions. No wonder people are fighting, sometimes with guns.
“There’s an awful lot of time spent arguing about what a bunch of dead dudes in wigs intended for us, without grappling with the fact these same dudes also intended slavery and pantaloons,” say the philosophizing scribes behind the anonymous InDecline billboard highjacking we feature today on BSA.
About the US daily gun slaughter, today’s in Nashville, InDecline shares their recent re-writing of text on the side-by-side billboards that adorn this Tennessean highway.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! New York is coming alive as spring approaches – and there is a lot of new graffiti and street art suddenly. We are also awash in news that keeps everyone jumping! The international-soon-to-be-national-bank crisis that is underway, the possible (likely) imposition of CBDC’s in its wake, the BRICs alliances building and de-dollarization of the world economy, the US funding of war in Ukraine, the attacks on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid by the same actors, the pending candidacy and/or arrest of NYC native Donald Trump, the non-transitory inflation rate that is outpacing our wages, creeping facial recognition software and cameras into every part of our culture without our permission, the total capture of our news outlets… .
On the good news side, our crime rate has been dropping a lot – even though dunderheads like Mike Mother Pence says we’re having a “crime wave.” Ya’ll just better educate yourselves – New Yorkers are a pain in the arse and are quick to argue about stupid things, but we also like credit for our crime rate dropping, please. Also, we like our new tulips and daffodils and pretty birds singing in the trees. Thank you.
And now, onto our new selections of fabulous graffiti and street art for your pleasure.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Louis Masai, Praxis VGZ, Degrupo, Jorit, Phetus88, Hektad, Qzar, Hugo Gyrl, Jim Tozzi, Toe Flop, Jappy Agoncillo, Tukios Art, BlackStar, Rocking Bones, and Dana van Vueren.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. BR1 & GEC – Fieno e Asfalto (Hay and Asphalt)
2. Ai Weiwei – Studio Visit – Via Design Boom
3. Amy: Beyond the Stage Mural – Via The Design Museum
BSA Special Feature: BR1 & GEC – Fieno e Asfalto (Hay and Asphalt)
Ready to witness an unauthorized intervention like you probably haven’t seen before? Italian artists BR1 & GEC take on the streets of the “Barriera di Milano” area of Torino with a bale of hay and dodge pedestrians and cars along the way. This action-packed adventure culminates in the final occupation of a parking spot, leaving people bothered and perplexed.
This performance isn’t just about having fun; there are layers of meaning, too- the paradox of the presence of a vital material necessary for city folks’ food production is comical in this context. However, the harsh response from people driving cars in the city is not quite as endearing. From exploring the relationship between natural and artificial landscapes to the rampant consumption of resources in urban centers, these artists touch on various current issues. At the very least, you think of the different uses of public space we take for granted and the rediscover activity that would be perfectly acceptable in rural areas. You may also say it is a form of resistance toward the modern world.
As you watch the calm and grounded progression of the wheel through city streets, you may consider the relationship between the artwork and the public space. The two artists often make ephemeral interventions in the urban context, and this is one more way to act spontaneously and without permission. With one simple, if not easy, performance, the viewer may consider the various symbolisms uprooted in the collective consciousness.
BR1 & GEC – Fieno e Asfalto (Hay and Asphalt)
Ai Weiwei – Studio Visit – Via Design Boom
“I choose things that I am not familiar with, which I can learn from, and which present me with a challenge.”
Amy: Beyond the Stage Mural – Via The Design Museum
To celebrate the anniversary of Amy’s birthday and the launch of the exhibition Amy: Beyond the Stage, a large-scale mural was hand painted on Camden High Street.
Today we look at an installation of cartoon flowers in Torino, Italy, that the artist hopes will raise awareness among people that we are being watched in public spaces more and more every day.
This public art project titled “Floral Video Surveillance System” is a temporary installation currently on display in the flowerbed of Largo Cibrario, San Donato. The piece comprises six hand-cut and painted cardboard flowers with an electronic eye of a camera at the center. The artist named GEC says that the aim is to reflect on the pervasive presence of technology in everyday life in a playful yet thought-provoking way.
The artist says the artwork has already attracted a lot of attention from passers-by, sparking conversations about the increasing use of technology in our lives. Although the installation is temporary, it became even more so when people began taking some of the flowers home. The artist sees its disappearance as a natural part of the public art process, where the installation becomes a public artwork and is no longer solely the artists. Too bad there wasn’t a streaming video nearby to catch the action.
This is the latest iteration of GEC’s project called “Floral Video Surveillance System” (“Sistema floreale di videosorveglianza”). Another series of video flowers is at the Museum of Urban art in Torino.
Gec, Sistema floreale di videosorveglianza, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and MAU – Museo di Arte Urbana, Torino.
A discussion with the artists Sebastian Wandl, Honey & Philip Wallisfurth
We’re pleased to invite you to a discussion about climate change at the Martha Cooper Library (MCL) at Urban Nation in Berlin about a new book by author Xavier Tapies called “Graffiti in Times of Climate Crisis”.
As we consider the role of artists as activists, one wonders if there is an appropriate response to the cascading events caused by climate change as expressed in our cities by artists. Keeping the real questions on the forefront, including what agendas may be behind large multi-national backed agencies setting goals for us, the discerning artist will have to study the issues first – so it’s great to have this book as a jumping-off point.
These and other issues will be discussed by three persons active on the current graffiti/street art scene, including Philip Wallisfurth (Senor Schnu), who has been active on the street and inside installations in Germany since 2007, Munich-based illustrator and painter Sebastian Wandl (aka WANDAL) who brings skateboarding and hip hop culture to his work, and style writer HONEY, who has been at the game since 2018 in a still male-dominated graffiti scene.
Four contemporary artists with native American heritage will be mounting a new exhibition in Amsterdam this spring called “Indigenous Americans: Post Colonial Expressions.” This is an excellent derivation of the typical grafftiti/street art story that we like to expose – especially when it is rooted in inviting more people into the room that continues to redefine itself.
Curator Hyland Mather and team at STRAAT Museum have been building a good foundation of diversity in the last few years as their collection has grown and their exhibitions schedule widens – with a professed mission to examine the street art and graffiti culture as it is expressed around the world.
“ ‘Indigenous Americans: Post Colonial Expressions’ speaks to the unity a diverse culture embodies, and to the deeply rooted history of Indigenous makers and their ongoing relationship with public space painting,” say organizers.
The four participating artists are Jaque Fragua, Danielle SeeWalker, Kaplan Bunce, and Anthony Garcia Sr. You may be familiar with one or all of them – we recall the text billboards of Jaque Fragua a few years ago in a distinctive hand that alerted public to some historical facts like “This Is Indian Land”, on a Los Angeles construction site wall – and some highjacked signs saying ”Sacred” and “Stop Coal”.
Danielle SeeWalker. Denver Central Market. (photo courtesy of Straat Museum)
“I see graffiti as a primordial art form of mark-making that started on caves and rocks as petroglyphs or pictographs,” Fragua said on ArtNet a few years ago. “The language is a bit different in modern times, but the spirit of visual storytelling is still there.”
“The contemporary Urban Art landscape to me looks like a mix between a culture-rich sharing of art practices from around the globe,” says artist Kaplan Bunce in a press release from the museum. “I see unity in the community and have found that by continuously practicing my indigenousness throughout these spaces I am continuing a pathway made by those who have been making marks on walls for all of time.”
Danielle SeeWalker. “Not Today Cowboy”. (photo courtesy of Straat Museum)Danielle SeeWalker. “Uncle Giving Directions”. (photo courtesy of Straat Museum)Jaque Fragua. (photo courtesy of Straat Museum)Kaplan Bunce. “Four Directions Prayer”. (photo courtesy of Straat Museum)Kaplan Bunce. (photo courtesy of Straat Museum)
Exhibition opens Saturday April 8th, 2023, from 7-10 pm in the STRAAT Gallery at STRAAT Museum, with the artists in attendance. In addition to the gallery exhibition which runs through Sunday June 4th, 2023, each artist will also create a mural scale work for STRAAT’s permanent collection in our massive main hall.
Elfo is a graffiti writer and social commentator whose work intentionally sidesteps traditional notions of style or technical lettering. This …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
