From where you are, you may not be able to hear the tremendous sound of a falling 100-meter thick iceberg…
Vegan Flava continues to merge environmental activism with his striking street art in his latest mural, “Falling Mountains,” situated in Snösätragränd, Stockholm. Created during the Spring Beast Festival‘s 10th anniversary, this piece strikingly depicts the dramatic ice loss of the Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica. The mural features a breaching humpback whale, its body cracking like a calving glacier, symbolizing the impending threat of rising sea levels due to melting ice.
The artist’s commitment to spotlighting urgent climate issues is powerfully evident in “Falling Mountains.” He employs the same compelling narrative techniques seen in his earlier works, utilizing natural elements and endangered species to highlight the fragility of our ecosystems. The whale, with its exposed roots, underscores the interconnectedness of life forms and the environment—a recurring theme in Vegan Flava’s art.
Reflecting on his intent, Vegan Flava says, “From where you are, you may not be able to hear the tremendous sound of a falling 100-meter thick iceberg, but you can witness the melting of the Thwaites at any coast towards the sea.”
His mission is to make distant ecological phenomena tangible and urgent for urban audiences. Piece by piece, mural by mural, Vegan Flava seeks to inspire action and awareness about the profound impacts of climate change on our planet.
Vegan Flava extends his sincere thank you to all the people who supported my mural project, to Highlights store and Loop colors for the paint and to Snösätra Kultur for providing the wall and an unforgettable mural festival, and to all artist friends and colleagues whom he painted alongside.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2023. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays Everyone!
As we bid farewell to this eventful year, Vegan Flava’s mural “Rooted above the Taiga” in New York’s Chinatown, created in June 2023, stands out as a poignant reminder of our interconnectedness with nature. Depicting an Arctic fox, a creature surviving in the harsh yet delicate balance of the taiga and tundra, Vegan Flava not only brings attention to the plight of this often-overlooked species but also symbolizes the broader challenges of climate change and environmental stewardship.
This piece, resonating with the themes of adaptation and resilience in the face of changing climates—both literal and metaphorical—speaks to the core of our shared experience in 2023. As we step into the new year, let’s carry the hope that, like the Arctic fox, we can find our balance and thrive amid the transformations our world is undergoing. Vegan Flava’s work, rooted in activism and empathy, is a call to embrace our role as guardians of our planet, a theme that has been crucial this year.
Punk Rock Politics, an Arctic fox, a Circumpolar Biome…
New York, a city that never sleeps, truly comes alive in the summer with an influx of international street artists and graffiti writers adorning its walls with fresh ideas and paint. Among them, Vegan Flava, a Swedish artist of global repute, seized his inaugural trip to unveil his unique approach—a synthesis of activism, urban aesthetics, and environmental consciousness. Over the past three decades, his artistic journey has been a contemplative exploration of art’s societal role, driven by his unwavering commitment to illuminate both local and global environmental and social issues. Woven through the fabric of hardcore punk music, veganism, environmentalism, graffiti, and urban art, Vegan Flava’s oeuvre emerges as a profound dialogue on societal complexities, hoping to stimulate your contemplation as well.
Vegan Flava’s artistic themes crystallize with clarity. He perceives his art as a mirror reflecting society’s nuances. He advocates for a shift in environmental awareness—a transformation that goes beyond human-centric perspectives to embrace a broader ecological responsibility. With an astute focus on the interconnectedness of all life forms, he delves into the intricate relationships between species and ecosystems. During a sweltering summer sojourn to New York, we had the privilege to engage with Vegan Flava, learning about his perspective on the natural world’s interwoven tapestry, our place within it, and the reverberating impact of even a solitary species’ disappearance.
BSA: Tell us a little about yourself, where you live, how long you have been an artist on the streets, other information you would like to share.
VF: I live in Stockholm between Lake Mälaren and the Baltic Sea. I’ve been an artist ever since I could hold a pencil. I discovered graffiti when I was 11 years old in 1989. I sprayed my first wall two years later. I painted graffiti during the 90’s, which evolved into urban art after the millennia. I’ve attended several art schools and graduated with a Master’s in fine art in 2005.
BSA: How did you conceive of being Vegan Flava, and what does it mean to you to adopt this moniker?
VF: It’s something that’s been interesting to explore. My alias Vegan Flava, has been a long-time art project where I’ve looked into how art can reflect society and influence it through urban art. I took this alias 25 years ago, and I was confronting the human-centric world with it.
I’ve noticed along the way that my alias sometimes affects people’s ability to appreciate my art. Art is a wide and open space for complex ideas, and what I’ve experienced is that my alias can be a narrow door that tends to close instead of opening into the broad thoughts, ideas, and topics my art explores. At the moment, I’m considering how my work would be affected if I start using my real name moving forward.
In the early 90s, the day after being at my first hardcore punk concert in the neighboring town of Vänersborg, Sweden, my friends and I formed our city’s first hardcore band. Beginning in 1993, I was active in the hardcore punk music movement, which brought my attention to many social issues. There were songs about how animals were treated in the meat and dairy industry, and at the merch tables at the concerts, info was spread through zines, pamphlets, and books.
The songs questioned human dominance, but it wasn’t until 1998 that I switched to a plant-based diet, and I started to write ‘Vegan’ in my graffiti. Later, I added the word ‘Flava’ to my street alias. In the hardcore scene, I learned that music and art can be used to reflect, change, and build society and not merely be experienced for pleasure. I was greatly affected by the visual language on all printed matter, such as concert posters, band t-shirts, CD covers, and booklets. Parallel to this, I was deeply into skateboarding and graffiti, which all had connections and were different forms of youth-oriented DIY culture with strong visual aesthetics.
BSA: Your earlier work often featured skeletal remains and dark imagery. Has that changed for you, and if so, how?
VF: Yes, I moved on from it a few years ago. I’ve been working on topics from nature around my hometown, animals, and flowers from the Swedish Arctic. A few years ago, I became interested in how much Swedes know about how the climate crisis affects Sweden. So, I focused even more on exploring local topics.
The Baltic harbor’s porpoise is critically endangered and is the only whale species living in the Baltic Sea. I’ve painted it in several artworks as a symbol for the critical state of the Baltic Sea, which has the largest dead sea floor area on the planet.
In February this year, my solo exhibition had the title Tears Of The Cryosphere and explored the many effects of the loss of water in frozen form. The cryosphere is basically the planet’s cooling system and is deeply part of Swedish identity. I’ve done several land-art pieces on snow-covered frozen lakes with large poems and motifs of endangered animals.
In paste-ups primarily in European cities, but now also in New York, and in murals and studio work, I’m looking into the movements of nature. As the climate warms, plants and animals in the biosphere must adapt to the new environmental conditions – or emigrate if they can. This is also the reality for many humans.
BSA: Is this the first time you have painted in New York? Can you describe what the experience was like for you?
VF: Yes, and I enjoyed every moment of it. It’s been a long-time dream to travel to the US, and I finally made it. My main goal was, of course, to paint a mural, and thanks to East Village Walls, I got the opportunity to paint a small mural in Manhattan. I was happy to meet people from the community and the many photographers who came by my wall and artists and curators from the NY urban art scene during my stay. The city’s art ecosystem was hard to enter, but I really loved New York, and I’m hoping to get an opportunity to go back soon.
BSA: Can you speak about the arctic fox in this image and its connection to Finnish or Swedish culture and ecology?
VF: The mural’s title is ”Rooted above the taiga,” and it depicts an arctic fox that lives far north above the tree line in the arctic tundra. Taiga is a circumpolar biome, an enormous pine and fir forest belt stretching through Russia, Alaska, Canada, Norway, Sweden, and Finland.
Due to the warming climate, the nature of the tundra is changing and decreasing. I’m painting the Arctic fox as a representative of this biome. It is not a threatened species in North America, but it was hunted to extinction in Finland, and in Sweden, it is listed as critically endangered.
In Sweden, the winter season is shorter, and it often rains in places where it used to snow. Winter trails that used to cross through frozen lakes can now be too weak. It changes the living circumstances of animals, plants, and humans. I’m concerned about the effects of the changing cryosphere, with melting permafrost and glaciers and the decreasing lake and sea ice.
In my art, I’m exploring topics and raising questions about species loss and changing planetary systems. Many species risk extinction before we even get to know them, such as the unique Baltic Harbour porpoise. I often face the question of what happens when some species disappear. Is it really a problem? What benefits do we lose when they are extinct? A species is often linked to several other species, so losing one affects others. We might not see what is already evident for other species. If the entire biomes of the tundra, the taiga, and the cryosphere could ask us, what is your reason for being? How would you answer that question?
BSA: Artists have myriad roles in society. How do you see your role as an artist who works on the street and whose paintings remain there long after you have finished?
VF: I’m interested in creating my art in dialog with the surroundings and in places that are not always necessarily designated spaces for art. Places where art can be intertwined with daily life and can be discovered in a spontaneous way. The art experience becomes a natural and simple part of the day instead of an active, planned, and conscious choice for a few. I also see public art as a language that expresses something non-commercial and can be a parallel dialog about something else. During my whole life, art of all sorts has challenged and inspired me to evolve as a person, and that’s what I hope my art can be a part of for others.
In Ukraine, Russia has bombed theaters and art schools and ruined public art and artworks. The Kyiv Soloists string ensemble was in Italy when their nation was invaded, and they decided to stay on tour to let the world hear Ukrainian music. Art collectives in Kyiv started producing bulletproof vests in their workshops, and Ukrainian poets and artists were voices of their culture in news channels worldwide. What this clearly shows is that art is producing identity; it is a home.
“The glacier has melted by about one meter annually since the turn of the millennium,” says Swedish street artist Vegan Flava. In fact, he says, the southern peak was Sweden’s highest mountain until two years ago as the 40 meter thick glacier continues to melt due the warming of the atmosphere. Now it is lower than the northern peak.
Today we are looking at the artists’ newest mural in Linköping, the title of which references this specific melting occurence “From Here to the Southern Peak.”
The circuitous artist mind imagines a bird from the roots of a blue corn flower in the Swedish province of Östergötland, and this painter meditates on the birds’ flight over rooftops up to the Southern Peak.
Vegan Flava’s interconnectedness of themes reminds us that one vital life system is affected by and often dependent upon the next. “Everything we humans build and live from depends on a stable climate,” Vegan Flava says, “like our water supply, agriculture, infrastructure and healthcare.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada: Somos La Luz (We Are The Light) 2. Vegan Flava: Migration In The Anthropocene 3. “The Birds” by Alfred Hitchcock – Diner Scene
BSA Special Feature: Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada: Somos La Luz (We Are The Light)
“This project is very personal to me. I have lost friends due to Covid 19. During the process of creating this portrait, I was able to meet Dr.Decoo´s family. I saw firsthand their immense sorrow for his loss. His life faded away just as the portrait I created was meant to fade away. Too many frontline workers are in danger of fading away. We must realize that this is in part due to the reality of institutional racism. I have seen the effects of poverty and marginalization. We must come together to address this reality.” – JRG
Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada: Somos La Luz (We Are The Light)
Vegan Flava: Migration In The Anthropocene
Maybe its because this weekend is Halloween but this promo video for street artist/land artist Vegan Flava may bring to mind another movie from this time of year.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. Vegan Flava – Signs on the Surface
BSA Special Feature: Vegan Flava – “Signs on the Surface”
Yes, we just passed the Easter/Passover holidays, and many parts of the Northern Hemisphere have already burst into Spring.
In Sweden, it takes a little longer to get to seeing flowers and new grass.
Street Artist Vegan Flava shares with us the product of a full winter of communing with a frozen lake – and finding a way to bring his street art skillz to the ice. Today in one video we present a sizeable compilation of various installations he did when the water was frozen, piled with snow.
He calls them “direct actions”.
“In these pieces I’ve mostly used biodegradeable chalk spray,” he says, “a shovel and ash on the ice and snow.” It’s good to know that he is caring for the earth while making his mark upon it.
In an eerily familiar way, the experience of being out there feels like many people feel right now in quarantine – free with their expansive thoughts and ideas on a never-ending canvas, but not quite comforted. With each text message and skull rendering in the snow, these actually begin to look like graffiti tags, enormous hidden clues to a larger story.
HEAL – Human Earth Animal Liberation. It’s a big aspiration, writ large across this lake. This is just one of his texts, his poems, his urgent slogans.
“With
the winters’ first snowfall, billions of unique crystals fall in slow motion
and cover the landscape,” he says. “It looks like a gigantic sheet of paper. It
is beyond belief to be able to walk across the lake during the winter – the
same that we swim in during summer. If these phenomena weren’t real, I would
dream of things such as this and wish they existed.”
That’s how curator Yasha Young began the UN Biennale in Berlin this month. A fantasy-infused ramble through a future jungle teeming with dark pop goth and an animated gorilla, the multi-featured installation by the outgoing Creative Director was meant to pose questions about a possible future, or many possible futures on an Earth deeply scarred, reclaiming itself from man/womankind’s folly.
Spread along a 100-meter path and teeming with small surprise exhibits popping from the savage magic of two-day overgrowth, the installation appeared to take inspiration, at least in part, from the wildly successful Berlin exhibition two years ago called, “The Haus”, by a trio called Die Dixons. That one featured 175 artists creating immersive, site-specific futurist/fantasy installations on the five floors of a former bank – inviting dance troops and performances and thousands who cued for hours around the block.
One of artists at UN’s “ROBOTS AND RELICS: UN-MANNED”, Herakut, was also in the Haus exhibition and here under the roaring U-Bahn on Bülowstraße produces one of the best synthesis of technology and fantasy. Their sculptural painted theatrical character of Mother Nature is straight from a childs’ imagination, blinking eyes forming a blue inquisitive aura around its visage.
No doubt many visitors winding through this late summer wildness were feeling quizzical to one another, confronting the various staged scenarios by 27 artists and asking “what if…”. Perhaps a lush and greener version of the traveling “29 Rooms” selfie house we saw in Brooklyn a few years ago, this one blended themes of post-disaster with a glistening dark leafy future girded with idiosyncracies and Hans Ruedi Giger airbrushed human/machines locked in biomechanical reverie.
“They
carry us off into barren deserts with relics of human existence,” says the
press release, “colorfully patterned
animals in overgrown areas as well as spherical light worlds.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. RONE Wrecks a Mansion in Melbourne
2. Vegan Flava: The taste of fresh water
3. Vegan Flava: Foot prints in the snow
4. Nina Chanel Abney’s “Colorfully Seductive, Deceptively Simple” Art at ICA Boston
BSA Special Feature: RONE Wrecks a Mansion in Melbourne
You know that a Street Artist is heading toward serious consideration as a collectible artist, no, painter, when they begin invoking the imagery and trappings of European so-called classicism. Here Rone temperately unveils the sweeping view of an estate, the tinkling of grand ivories, the complex mourning of strings, the long veiled windows of the sitting room. It all serves as a set piece for a portrait of the light-skinned royal. This one takes the entire wall and has no gilded frame. But it does have drips, so you know we’re keeping it real, bro.
No candalabras, you ask? Hang in there, Whitaker, they’re coming.
A secret installation inside the Burnham Beeches mansion in Sherbrooke, Victoria, the artist has a velvet crush on the ghosts who may still live here. He sets the stage for their return, and invites you to tour the handsome estate just east of Mellbourne. Bring your gin and vermouth, darling, and enjoy the EMPIRE, while it lasts.
RONE “EMPIRE”
Fresh Water and Foot Prints from Vegan Flava
Switching hemispheres, we fly to lake Översjön in Stockholm
and find Vegan Flava writing in the snow, contemplating existence. First he sets the pristine stage of this two
chapter story. Or rather nature does.
Then he defiles the crystalline palette with aerosol
(biodegradeable black chalk), smudging matter together like a charcoal
portraitist. As the camera pulls away we see the portrait, or relic in the snow.
“How we produce food, consume, and the
burning of fossil fuels leaves the footprints of collapsed ecosystems,” he
says, “melting the worlds glaciers, dead ocean floors, logged and burned
forests, dirty air and waters.”
Vegan Flava: The taste of fresh water
Vegan Flava: Foot prints in the snow
Nina Chanel Abney’s “Colorfully Seductive, Deceptively Simple” Art
Sometimes the most impactful art is the kind that begins the conversation with you and can go deeper with you if you would like it to, but can stay on the surface if that is all you can countenance on that particular day.
Perhaps the rapid romance that fans have had with muralist Nina Chanel Abney is her self-described approach of creating “deceptively simple investigations of contemporary cultural issues.” Currently on exhibition at ICA Boston, her work is described by the organizer as “Deeply invested in creating imagery that is legible and accessible, Nina Chanel Abney (b. 1982, Chicago) is known for weaving colorful geometric shapes, cartoons, language, and symbols into chaotic and energetic compositions.”
Also; systemic racism, police violence, unjust incarceration, white privilege.
When you are ready to go there, she will too. Ready? Let’s go!
Here it is! Photographer Jaime Rojo of BSA selects a handful of his favorite images from his travels through 9 countries and around New York this year to present our 2018 BSA Images of the Year.
Seeing the vast expressions of aesthetics and anti-aesthetic behavior has been a unique experience for us. We’re thankful to all of the artists and co-conspirators for their boundless ideas and energy, perspectives and personas.
Once you accept that much of the world is in a semi-permanent chaos you can embrace it, find order in the disorder, love inside the anger, a rhythm to every street.
And yes, beauty. Hope you enjoy BSA Images of the Year 2018.
Here’s a list of the artists featured in the video. Help us out if we missed someone, or if we misspelled someones nom de plume.
1Up Crew, Abe Lincoln Jr., Adam Fujita, Adele Renault, Adrian Wilson, Alex Sena, Arkane, Banksy, Ben Eine, BKFoxx, Bond Truluv, Bordalo II, Bravin Lee, C215, Cane Morto, Charles Williams, Cranio, Crash, Dee Dee, D*Face, Disordered, Egle Zvirblyte, Ernest Zacharevic, Erre, Faith LXVII, Faust, Geronimo, Gloss Black, Guillermo S. Quintana, Ichibantei, InDecline, Indie 184, Invader, Isaac Cordal, Jayson Naylor JR, Kaos, KNS, Lena McCarthy, Caleb Neelon, LET, Anthony Lister, Naomi Rag, Okuda, Os Gemeos, Owen Dippie, Pejac, Pixel Pancho, Pork, Raf Urban, Resistance is Female, Sainer, Senor Schnu, Skewville, Slinkachu, Solus, Squid Licker, Stinkfish, Strayones, Subway Doodle, The Rus Crew, Tristan Eaton, Vegan Flava, Vhils, Viktor Freso, Vinie, Waone, Winston Tseng, Zola
It’s BSA Film Friday! Now we present the best of the year, according to you. We bring you new videos each week – about 240 of them this year. The beauty of the experience is that it can feel quite random and exhilarating – rather like the serendipity of finding new Street Art.
You helped us decide who made it to the top 15 – and we feel proud to see some of these because we liked them too. When we take videos on the road to different cities and countries doing our BSA Film Friday LIVE we also like to share these in classrooms or theaters or lecture halls with locals, students, city leaders. Nothing can beat seeing faces light up, a person thrilled to finally get the sense of something, better understanding the scene, helping people with a new way to look at art in the streets.
The best part is many of these videos encourage you to create, to co-create, to actively participate in public space with meaning and intention. As a collection, these 15 are illuminating, elevating, riveting, strange, soaring, secretly otherworldly, and achingly beautifully human.
Special congratulations go out to artists/directors Kristina Borhes & Nazar Tymoshchuk who landed on the list two times this year, including the number 1 position. Their work is about the intersection of art and theory and life, how to create it, to see it, and how to re-see your world.
We hope you can take some time to enjoy some of the best Street Art videos from around the world and on BSA this year.
“Listen, my only request…. When you’re done doing your thing, do an Italian flag with my daughter’s name on it,” says a guy who is shouting up from the street to the roof where two Hungarian graff writers are preparing to hit a wall with a giant rat in Jersey. That rat looks fantastic as it basks in the blinking glow of the marquee for Vinny Italian Gourmet on the streets in the Newark night below.
That scene alone can stand as their American iconic moment for the US Tapes, but Fatheat and TransOne documented a number of golden moments on their trip this winter to New York, Wynwood, LA, and Las Vegas. Travel with them as they try to square the television mythology of modern America with the one they are encountering in all its ridiculous free-wheeling self satisfied unreflective emotional consumerist funkified freedom*. Standby for sonic blasts from the cultural pulp soundbook and prepare for a celebrity visit.
Slyly they observe and sample and taste and catalogue the insights by traversing the main stage and the margins, smartly not taking it too seriously, finding plenty of places for wide-eyed wonder and wiseguy sarcasm. Steeped in graffiti history with mad skillz themselves, this is all an adventure. Generous of heart, they also share it with you.
“And lost be the day to us in which a measure hath not been danced.”
~ from Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra
Every day since the shootings of artists and journalists at the Charlie Hebdo offices on January 14, 2015, dancer Nadia Vadori-Gauthier has made sure to dance for a minute or more. It sounds like a good idea.
“Without editing or effects, in the place and state of mind I find myself that day, with no special technique, staging, clothing, or makeup, nothing but what is there,” she says on her website.
“I dance inside or outside, in public or private places, alone or with others, strangers or people I know, sometimes friends.
I dance as protesters demonstrate, to effect a living poetry, to act through sensitivity against the violence of certain aspects of the world.
This is the solution I found: an action to my own measure, a concrete, repeated action that may redraw lines, disrupt the design, shake up the norms.”
Here she is in Paris on Esperance Street in front of a mural by Street Artist Seth.
All the subversive drama of a terrorist cell, all the color of Mardi Gras, all the pomp and ceremony of an Olympic triathlon. Wielding the long-handled roller like a javelin in the hands of Järvinen, weight lifting multiple backpacks full of paint cans, climbing and jumping walls with speed and dexterity, the 1UP team goes for the gold.
Debuting today on BSA is the flaming new 1UP crew video directed by the ingenious Selina. Slicing the streets with the drone camera like a hot knife through butter, she follows the unruly yet highly organized vandals from overhead in a manner more melodic than menacing as Miles lines up one shot after another in this instantly classic continuous thread of aerosol mayhem.
Passing the aerosol can like a baton, this relay race puts 1UP over the finish line while many rivals would have just blasted out of the blocks. But will those Olympian circles turn into golden handcuffs before the closing ceremony?
A quick overview to catch you up on the 7 most recent pieces attributed to Banksy in Paris. He’s said to be creating work more attuned to the plight of migration, but others have observed it is a return to the classic Banksy sarcastic sweetness that has characterized the clever sudden missives he has delivered since he began. See Butterfly Art News’ coverage here: Paris: Banksy for World Refugee Day
It’s an Italian movie directed by Luchino Visconti in 1960, yes. It is also the name of a crew of Berlin graffiti/installation artists whose satirical interventions play on issues propriety and property – and on social experiments that dupe the media, the public, and banks.
Did they really set up an apartment inside the subway? Is that really the tracks and wall of a metro inside a gallery? Is that Wagner playing in the mobile war arcade set up in the Christmas market? Are those hand grenades being lobbed by children? Is the bank facade blinking red every 20 seconds?
Rocco und seine Brüder (Rocco and His Brothers) have you engaged. Now you have to answer the questions.
The Uruguayan Street Artists/muralist Florencia Durán and Camilo Nuñez are “Colectivo Licuado” and here in the middle of Oviedo in Northern Spain to create a new mural for the Parees fest this September. As is their practice they study the culture that they are visiting and create an allegory that is familiar to the community, if still rather mystical.
In this case they visit Colectivo Licuado & Nun Tamos Toes for a visit of great cultural exchange – sharing sketches, songs, and learning the history of women’s roles in traditional Asturian culture. The resulting mural project is collaborative in nature and powerful in person.
“I pay attention to the intensity of the gaze and the posture, so the passerby is challenged and seeks to question the project.”
A sociological experiment and intervention on the streets by the French Street Artist YZ takes place in Abidjan and camera work in the crowds allows you to appreciate the action on the street. A city of 4.7 million people and the economic capital of Côte d’Ivoire, the city has a lively culture of street vending that is unregulated and often populated by children.
YZ speaks with the folks she meets who are vending, who she refers to as “girls” although many are women. Her goal is to better understand them, she says, and to create a Street Art campaign of their portraits.
“I realized that their situation was very different from the men. So I wanted to know more about them. So I started the project ‘Street Vendors’,” she says.
Chernobyl is a nuclear disaster that figures profoundly into the modern age – and for centuries into the future.
Today not so many people talk about this man-made horror that killed a Russian town and chased out its survivors in 1986 just 90 kilometers northeast of Kiev. Called the most disastrous nuclear accident in history, it evacuated 115,000 and spread a radioactive cloud around the Earth, with European neighbors like Scandinavia, Switzerland, Greece, Italy, France and the UK detecting the effects of radiation for years afterward. Three scientists at The New York Academy of Sciences have estimated that over time the number of people killed by effects from the meltdown was almost a million.
Because of the nature of radiation, Chernobyl has been estimated to not be safely habitable for about 20,000 years.
A short documentary today taking us through last autumns On October 7th in Marseille, France in collaboration with Galerie Saint Laurent and Spanish artist Gonzalo Borondo as they presented Matière Noire. A massive collection of individual installations that took over the top floor of an exhibition space normally used for shops, Borondo’s influence in the selections is throughout, a story told in three acts on Projection, Perception and Interpretation.
“When I was just a baby, my Mama told me, ‘Son, always be a good boy, don’t ever play with guns.’ But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.” Johnny Cash sings with some bravado in Folsom Prison Blues on an album released 50 years ago this year. Street Artist Shepard Fairey honors the album and here in Sacramento, California to raise consciousness about the outrageously high rate of incarceration here. “The United States has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of it’s prisoners,” he says, making you question the system in the Land of the Free.
No. 5
MZM Projects – Kristina Borhes & Nazar Tymoshchuk/”Wasteland Wanderers”
This week we feature a couple of new film pieces from the Ukraine based duo of Kristina Borhes and Nazar Tymoschuk which fairly present an insightful treatise on a particular flavor of Post-Graffiti. Think of it as a two volume textbook and your professors will guide you through the darkness into the light.
A Dilogy.
“The place tells you what to do,” is a poetic and truthful phrase uttered in “Night” on the relationship a vandal has to an abandoned factory, school, home, medical facility; it is spacial and alchemical.
It is also personal, says the female narrator. “The presence of their absence,” is something that every Wasteland Wanderer will be familiar with, the knowledge and feeling that others have been there before you. The work is undeniably affected, even created in response.
“I’ve started a new series called ‘On the Road’ which looks at life behind the scenes in street art culture,” Doug Gillen tells us about this debut episode. Look forward to Doug’s unique perspective on Street Art festivals, art fairs, and studio visits as he expands to the world of urban contemporary.
Not typically who you think of as a Street Artist, here we see Add Fuel and Doug talk about his first book and you see examples of work from this tile maker who infuses traditional Portuguese techniques and pattern making with pop-modern cultural references and cartoon archetypes.
He has a hat, sunglasses, and he has been creating huge black and white photo installations of people wheat-pasted to the sides of buildings for how long? Surprising to us that Jetsonorama is not more of a household name in Street Art circles – his work is solidly tied to biography and human rights, uses his own photography, and routinely elevates humanity – and has been doing it for some time now.
Why isn’t he in huge museum exhibitions?
Today we have a new video giving you a good look at the work and the artist along with the genuine connection and presence that he has with community, taking the time to share their stories.
“The speed of ruin is just something else,” says Street Artist Vegan Flava, and it’s an exasperating realization. Extrapolated to thinking about the enormous war industry, and there is such a thing, you realize that pouring money year after year into ever more sophisticated and destructive weaponry only results in broken bridges, buildings, water systems, vital infrastructure, lives.
Construction, on the other hand, can be arduous and time consuming, takes vision, planning, collaboration, and fortitude. Like great societies.
How quickly they can be eroded, destroyed.
But since Vegan Flava is creating during this destructive enterprise, you get a glimpse into his creativity, and sense of humor. Similarly the psychographics of this story and how it is told reveal insights into the artist and larger themes.
“A drawing, an idea on a piece of paper, can swiftly grow into something larger, thoughts and actions leading to the next. But creating something is never as fast as to tear it to pieces. The speed of ruin is just something else,” he says.
No. 1
MZM Projects – Kristina Borhes & Nazar Tymoshchuk /”Aesthetic of Eas”
“We wanted everything to occur naturally in this movie. We wanted to achieve spontaneity,” say film makers Kristina Borhes and Nazar Tymoshchuk about their up close look at graffiti writer/abstract painter EAS. In this new film they have captured the creative spirit in action as unobtrusively as they could, allowing the artist to speak – in a way he never does, they say.
Today on BSA Film Friday we’re proud to debut this new portrait by three artists – one painter and two film makers – to encourage BSA readers to take a moment and observe, inside and outside.
Biggie Smalls and Alfred Hitchcock open Autumn Equinox for BSA this week and we can’t help but think of that movie “The Birds” by the English film director where nature turns against man. Kiwi Street Artist Owen Dippie painted the mural in Brooklyn at the end of the summer and the mashup of references between the Brooklyn rapper and the dark cinematic thrillmaster in black and white may frighten you if you imagine those birds balanced at the end of their cigars began to peck their eyes out.
Friday night marked a new milestone for Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art in Berlin there was a preview of the newly completed and opened artists’ residencies put on display. We were treated to the creative environments of 11 of the residencies with the first group of artists in attendance including NeSpoon, Herakut, Li-Hill, Snik, Ludo, Mia Florentine Weiss, Quintessenz, Sellfable, Dot Dot Dot, Louis Masai, Wes 21 and Onur. The museum will open its doors again for the museum’s second exhibition titled “The Power of Art as a Social Architect” this Thursday. Check it out if you are in Berlin.
So here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring 1UPCrew, Adele Renault, AKUT, Berlin Kidz, BustArt, Dina Saadi, Exit Art, L.E.T., M-City, Mehsos, Owen Dippie, Snik, and Vegan Flava.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. INDECLINE Billboard “Clown” Takeover
2. FACTORY OF KAOZ
3. Vegan Flava: A million years lost in a moment. Trollhättan, Sweden
4. “ARTinfect IV – The PFAFF Project” in Kaiserslautern, Germany
BSA Special Feature: INDECLINE Billboard “Clown” Takeover
In Los Angeles the activist Street Art posse named INDECLINE overtook a billboard recently to grab attention of those whom they are afraid are being slowly lulled by the circus of distraction and Tweets that make America Hate Again.
FACTORY OF KAOZ
We had the opportunity to experience some Liepzig Kaoz this week inside a factory that lays abandoned, yet full of opportunity for graffiti and Street Artists who explore its many rooms and stairs and broken windows. For Kaoz it is nearly a portfolio of his works, as well as a stage for fashion shoots, a set for photo projects. Join him as he shows you around the place, and watch your step.
Vegan Flava: A Million Years Lost in a Moment. Trollhättan, Sweden.
The briefest video here from a familiar Stockholm face as we see this piece from Vegan Flava in Trollhättan that he says is meant to address the norms of what to eat and consume in our culture; norms that are quickly destroying in a relative moment the Earth that took a million years to get to this point. He tells us that he believes we need to shift our thoughts and practices to value nature and animals.
“Ecocide is the crime of all time. It is destabilizing the world as people will have to flee from environmental disasters or conflicts concerning natural resources. The dominant culture is lethal to every aspect of this planet. Giving rights to nature and animals similar to human rights would enable to juridically protect ecosystems from collapse, freshwater from pollution, forests from destruction and animals from extinction.”
“ARTinfect IV – The PFAFF Project”
A roll-call video of participants from the Pfaff Project featuring fantasy, gothic, illustration-based, graffiti and Street Art inside an ex-urban spot now converted for a rolling display of fresh works in Kaiserslautern, a city in southwest Germany located in the Bundesland of Rhineland-Palentinate.
Here you can catch shots of artists like Zeso, Bustart, Serge, Pollo7, Meret, Snare79, DRÜ Egg, Chromeo, and ENDO.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
