Category Archives: Street art

How street art is helping young migrants paint a brighter future in Italy

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An innovative community project has brightened buildings, ‘brought people together’ and provided an emotional outlet after traumatic journeys

Jadhav*, 18, from Bangladesh, arrived in Italy 10 months ago, but is still haunted by memories of his journey with people smugglers across the Mediterranean Sea.

“There were 156 people packed into a small boat. There were women and children,” says Jadhav in broken Italian and Bengali translated on a smartphone app. “Waves were coming over the side. People were weeping. There was no hope of survival.”

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‘They call us bewitched’: the DRC performers turning trash into art – photo essay

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Dolls found in rubbish dumps, radio parts and discarded flip-flops are among items used to create surreal costumes by a Kinshasa collective highlighting political and environmental issues

As a child, Shaka Fumu Kabaka witnessed the atrocities that took place during the six-day war between Ugandan and Rwandan forces in his home town of Kisangani in June 2000.

“It was not even our war, but a war between two foreign armies,” he said.

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Calls for Keith Haring mural to stay at Barcelona site being turned into care home

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Artwork in building slated for demolition faces uncertain future, though city has pledged to save it

It all began one February night in 1989. Cesar de Melero was DJing in the Ars Studio club in Barcelona when someone told him that the artist Keith Haring was outside but the doorman wouldn’t let him in.

“The place was packed, so I put on a record and pushed through the crowd,” De Melero told the Guardian. “And there he was with his saintly, innocent face and I told the doorman to let him in and I said to the boss: ‘Champagne for Keith Haring.’”

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Crude, obscene and extraordinary: Jean Dubuffet’s war against good taste

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He was the inventor of ‘art brut’ who rebelled against his parents, his teachers and then art itself. Yet the impact of his wild provocative paintings, often culled from graffiti, can still be seen today

Which great artist of the 20th century has been most influential on the 21st? Neither Picasso nor Matisse, as they have no heirs. And not Marcel Duchamp, however much we genuflect before his urinal. No, the artist of the last century whose ideas are everywhere today was a wine merchant who took street art and fashioned it into something extraordinary more than 75 years ago.

After four years of Nazi occupation, you’d think Parisians would have been unshockable. But in 1944, the newly liberated city was sorely provoked by the antics of Jean Dubuffet. Even as the last shots were fired, he was creating newspaper collages bearing the fragmentary graffiti messages he saw in the streets: “Emile is gone again”, “Always devoted to your orders”, “URGENT”. In the next couple of years, he unveiled shapeless, childlike paintings that abandoned all pretence at skill.

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‘It’s a funeral march’: French artist JR’s powerful eulogy for Australia’s Murray-Darling

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Exclusive: The street artist’s latest work saw 60 people parade through Lake Cawndilla in NSW, holding aloft enormous portraits of local farmers and leaders as they fight to save Australia’s vital river system

The mood around Lake Cawndilla in western New South Wales on Saturday is funereal but defiant, as a procession of around 60 locals parade through scrub and sand around its banks.

They carry between them a series of 30m-long cloth figures: three local citrus farmers and prominent Baakandji artist William Badger Bates.

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The more satirical street murals are, the less they resemble great art

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Street art that we share online tends to be inspiring – not strange, enigmatic or challenging

Whatever you think of street art, there’s no denying its pedigree. The paintings done on cave walls 30,000 years ago are today acknowledged as the first creative triumph of the human mind. But before their modern recognition as prehistoric wonders, these pictures of mammoths and bison were dismissed by Renaissance cavers who came across them as crude contemporary graffiti. That’s because graffiti were as universal 400 years ago as they are today, and just as disreputable.

Today we veer between seeing graffiti as visual noise and genius coming up from the streets. That’s the fascinating ambiguity of those marks and images. They can be dismissed as a public nuisance or hailed as works of witty artistic genius. Banksy in Britain and JR in France have followed in the footsteps of the 1980s New York street and subway art stars Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring to become respected and marketable. Basquiat and Haring were proteges of Andy Warhol, whose embrace of high and pop art, the beautiful and mundane, set the stage for today’s street art. Warhol himself responded to the graffiti craze with a series of abstract paintings he made by covering the canvases with copper, then urinating on them to oxidise the pigment and produce lovely mineral blues and greens. It was literally the lowest of street activities, peeing against a wall, become Art.

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Palestinians stage surprise ‘thank you’ event for Banksy in Bethlehem

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Photographs of works go on display in Manger Square to celebrate British street artist’s contribution to diversifying tourism

Photographs of 20 pieces of Banksy’s artwork in Palestine have been displayed in the centre of Bethlehem as a thank you to the anonymous British street artist for helping diversify tourism in the city.

The images were collated by Palestinian photographers for the surprise exhibition in Manger Square.

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Artlords, not warlords – how Kabul’s artists battle for the streets

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Muralists are covering the Afghan capital’s blast walls with agitprop imagery and calling out corruption

From the killing of George Floyd in the US and the drowning of Afghan refugees in Iran, to the signing of the US-Taliban agreement towards peace and brutal murder of a Japanese aid worker, a group of Afghan artists have taken paintbrushes to adorn Kabul’s grey blast walls with vivid imagery.

The barriers have been transformed into politically inspired murals, which the artists hope will create “visual dialogue” and raise awareness of corruption and injustices.

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Color is not a crime: New York’s Black Lives Matter street art

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Across the US, artists have responded to the death of George Floyd and the ensuing protests with impactful and urgent work. In New York, artworks have appeared supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, and remembering the deaths of, among others, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain and Eric Garner

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‘Thai Banksy’ tests boundaries with gallery show before election

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Headache Stencil’s work portrays Thai democracy as a game for the ruling elite

His works began appearing overnight on the streets of Bangkok and Chiang Mai five years ago, incendiary satirical depictions of the military officials who took power in Thailand in the 2014 coup.

The authorities worked quickly to erase all trace of the graffiti, but there was no stopping the artist, who calls himself Headache Stencil and is often referred to as the Banksy of Thailand. Pictures of his works portraying the Thai prime minister, Prayut Chan-o-cha, as Dr Evil from Austin Powers or the deputy prime minister on the face of a Rolex have been shared millions of times on social media.

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Joy of six: the buildings transformed by 3D hexagon murals

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Street artist Mr June brings facades to life with his abstract, colourful designs

The Dutch artist David Louf, who goes by Mr June, is the person behind these striking 3D hexagon murals, which have appeared on walls from Berlin to the Bronx.

Louf grew up in Amsterdam immersed in hip-hop and graffiti, and turned to graphic design as an adult. Eight years ago he moved back to street art and now combines his skills to create vibrant, abstract murals on buildings across the world.

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