ARTS-BRAZIL: Graffiti Comes In Off the Street

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 2 2007 (IPS) - Chico realised that his drawings on the walls of Rio de Janeiro were an art form when, at the age of 18, he read an article about the pioneers of graffiti in this Brazilian city.

Earlier, he had tried to become a football player, and worked as an administrative employee. Meanwhile he drew for pleasure and kept a file of his drawings.

He developed his own signature mark, a flag designed somewhat like that of Brazil. When he became aware of his vocation in 1998, he learned the techniques. Two years later, Chico and four friends formed the group Naçao Grafitti (Graffiti Nation). Their group became well-known for their unauthorised graphics in public spaces in Rio de Janeiro.

Two of its members, Bragga and Ment, are featured in the “Fabulous Disorder” exhibition sponsored by the Caixa Económica Federal, a state bank with a social focus. The bank’s cultural centre is playing host to graffiti works and giving them their rightful place among the visual arts.

The works of 16 graffiti artists and two collectives are being shown in three exhibit halls. The works are drawn, painted or mounted on walls and columns and display a great variety of styles, including sculptures and other three-dimensional features not normally part of conventional graffiti.

The exhibition, which runs from Mar. 13 to Apr. 29, features Brazilian artists from Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. The foreigners include two Germans, Loomit and Stohead, Daze from New York, San from Spain and the French duo Scien and Klor.

All the exhibits were specially created in situ. A video in the entrance hall runs continuously, showing the graffiti artists at work on the wide wall spaces.

“Between a scribble and art,” Bragga wrote on his mural, modestly casting doubt on the artistic nature of his work. As well as brush painting and stencilling (using shapes cut from X-ray films that are outlined on a wall when spray-painted over), Bragga used spotlights to highlight a shining point on his exhibit, and added small sculptures to the drawing, which are unusual in his graffiti work.

Doing their creative work in the art gallery gave the graffiti artists an opportunity to transcend the restrictions of their métier, like the need to work fast, looking over their shoulders in case the law catches them defacing someone’s property on the streets. They were thus at their ease to add new techniques and materials.

Vitché, from Sao Paulo, for instance, made wood and metal sculptures, such as a robotic metal figure, part insect, part quadruped with an android head.

Ment of Naçao Grafitti built a hut with one slope of the roof representing a “favela” (shantytown clinging to the hills surrounding Rio) and the other, a district of luxury buildings. A tunnel inside depicts daily life and violence in Rio.

Outer walls in the cultural centre have been scrawled on by youths who mar the walls of the city with rough scribblings which are also “graffiti”, an illicit means of expression with an ancient history, but are a far cry from the colourful, technically developed, visually impressive works also on display.

Although he founded Naçao Grafitti, Chico was not selected as a participant by the exhibition’s curator, Daniela Labra, but he is happy that this art form has achieved attention and recognition in Brazil, he told IPS.

“Thanks to my graffiti art, I have already been to Great Britain, and I’m hoping to go to India,” he said.

For Chico and some of his colleagues, graffiti is not just a means of earning a living by selling some paintings, creating graphics for websites and providing other artistic services.

His work also has a social impact. Chico teaches graffiti techniques to poor youngsters under the aegis of Afro-Reggae, an initiative that began by organising music bands in a favela, and today provides a variety of courses and activities for marginalised people in many cities.

Graffiti art emerged in the 1970s in the poor African-American neighbourhoods of New York. A decade later, Sao Paulo became the first Brazilian city to have its own graffiti artists. Rio de Janeiro had many “scribblers”, but artistic graffiti only arrived there in the 1990s.

Sao Paulo graffiti artists, like those in foreign countries, have generally studied art at universities or art schools, and their training is apparent in their work, Carlos Eduardo Mota, a music student who is working at the Caixa Cultura exhibition, told IPS.

In contrast, Rio de Janeiro’s graffiti artists are almost all self-taught, like Chico, who only finished secondary school. They painted their works on the walls in the North Zone of Rio, which is poorer and less visited by tourists than the South Zone, Mota said.

Rio graffiti artists’ link with hip-hop culture, which also finds expression in rap music and breakdancing, was always tenuous and now hardly exists.