Favela Art: getting ready for the world cup & paint an entire favela

In 2006, the Dutch artist duo Haas&Hahn started deaveloping the idea of creating community-driven art interventions in Brazil. Their efforts yielded two murals which were painted in Vila Cruzeiro, Rio's most notorious slum, in collaboration with local youth. The artworks received worldwide coverage and have become points of pride in the community and throughout Rio.

The first painting, finished in 2007, was a 150m2 mural depicting a boy flying a kite, by far the most popular pastime in Rio's favela's.


O Morro

The initial idea of the Favela Painting project has always been to paint an entire hillside favela in the center of Rio, visible to all inhabitants and visitors.

This project involves employing the inhabitants of a favela to paint their own houses according to a pre-arranged pattern. It will turn their community into an artwork of epic scale and will produce an explosion of color, joyfully radiating into the world. Visible from the center of Rio, 'O Morro' will draw attention to the city's deplorable social situation, while instilling pride and joy in the at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

The project will transform the community into a landmark, a tourist attraction, and, most of all, an inspirational monument that assumes a place as an essential part of Rio's image, alongside the Sugarloaf and the statue of Christ the Redeemer.

expo@choco

 

Street Artist Turns Vandalism Into Charity

Following the graffiti history-promoting “Writer’s Bench” project, artists continue campaigning for public acceptance of the illicit art form. Bristol-based street artist IMBUE recently installed some small plaques alongside local tags. Engraved with the message, “this artwork was kindly donated by a local artist,” the gallery-style signs are intended to add some credence and sway people questioning whether the spraypainted pieces are vandalism or art.

Artists Honor Graffiti History With Plaque, Mock MTA Posters

Since the M.T.A. doesn’t appreciate the historical significance of the subway graffiti movement and in most cases refuses to even acknowledge it, this new “unsanctioned project” that utilizes the “camouflage of design to lend stature and authority to the Writer’s Bench at 149th St and Grand Concourse” is not only fitting, but in many cases necessary. Artists Erik Burke and Yale Wolf have been putting up faux SubTalk posters in stations and even installed a plaque at the legendary Writer’s Bench, the focal point for graffiti artists during the early years where they would meet up to compare notes, trade flicks, swap stories, and show off blackbooks. The illegal, but educational campaign is an interesting method to recapture and broadcast such an important piece of New York City history.

It was a matter of time before they would strike back!

In the summer of 2000, Amsterdam was invaded, by the French artist Space Invader

Who are you ?
I'm Invader (that's my alias). I always appear masked in public, so no one knows my face. Some people call me a polluter, others say I'm an artist. I prefer to think of myself as an invader !

What's the Space Invaders project about?
The idea is to "invade" cities all over the world with characters inspired by first-generation arcade games, and especially the now classic Space Invaders. I make them out of tiles, meaning I can cement them to walls and keep the ultra-pixelated appearance.

How many people are involved?
Just me. In the eight years I've been working on this project, I've traveled to 35 cities on all five continents with the sole intention of "invading" them!
Having said that, people have sent me photos of Space Invaders in towns I've never set foot in! I see it as a positive thing, a kind of tribute. I did consider setting up a group strategy but it's a hard thing to delegate. So while I don't encourage this kind of copying, I don't especially condemn it either.

What made you choose Space Invaders as the main character for the project?
Lots of reasons. I see them as a symbol of our era and the birth of modern technology, with video games, computers, the Internet, mobile phones, hackers and viruses. And "space invader" is a pretty good definition of what I'm doing... invading spaces!

Green Guerilla Tactics

After reverse graffiti, now in Brooklyn we’ve discovered ‘living graffiti’ — an idea which takes the idea of clean graffiti to the next level by creating street art out of living, breathing plants.

Edina Tokodi studied graphic art and design at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts and also completed urban design course work in Milan, Italy. Her work can be seen on the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn and in unexpected outcroppings on a street near you.
http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/11/03/clean-green-living-graffiti-made-from-moss/#