BOOK A STREET ARTIST MAGAZINE ISSUE 8 / FEBRUARY 2016
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BOOK A STREET ARTIST MAGAZINE ISSUE 8 / FEBRUARY 2016 EDITORS IN CHIEF Guille Lasarte & Charlotte Specht guille@pantamagazine.com charlotte@bookastreetartist.com ART DIRECTOR Guille Lasarte MARKETING DIRECTOR Mario Rueda mario@bookastreetartist.com CONTRIBUTORS Patricio Pumarino, Ganzeer, Kirsti Anna Urpa, Mostafa Hussein, Adham Bakry, Caroline Palla, Mehri Khalil, Dora Dalila, Eva Frapiccini, Nour El Refai, Ornella Fieres, Dion Lucas, Brothers Moving, Carlos Hernandez, Aud Lew, Chang Han, Gabriela Uweis, Ricardo Kuettel, Caro Curbelo, Colectivo Licuado, Alfalfa, Ricardo Parker, Janielle Williams, Philine von Düszeln, Stefanie Tendler, Maresa Harvey, Alexandra Henry, Toofly, Teddy Kang, The Koppel Project, Gabriella Sonabend, Sol Bailey Barker SPECIAL THANKS TO Quintessenz, Pau Quintanajornet, Pepper Levain, Tali Kimelman, Dario Rossi www.pantamagazine.com panta@bookastreetartist.com FOUNDERS OF BOOK A STREET ARTIST Charlotte Specht Mario Rueda www.bookastreetartist.com
Cover illustration by Ganzeer Illustration on inside front cover by Patricio Pumarino
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS I’m not a big fan of the whole inspirational quote on a blurry background photo trend that’s been happening for a while now. Perhaps it’s due to my disdain for inspirational quotes in general and the mere illusion of revelation that they project. That being said, I’m going to go ahead and throw out an inspirational quote by John Keating, Robin Williams’ character in the film Dead Poets Society: “…medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” It’s a powerful one and I feel it’s appropriate to mention here because it expresses exactly why we create this magazine. We’re not fooling ourselves into thinking we’re going to change the world – we’re not saving any lives or building any bridges. It’s just beautiful, significant art that continues to occupy the pages of PANTA and just that is enough to consider it a worthwhile endeavor. In a world that can disappoint in so many ways, art continues to play a substantial role in bringing us all together. Thank you for being a part of PANTA. ∆
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ISSUE 8 / CONTENTS
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ILLUSTRATION
PATRICIO PUMARINO I L LU ST RAT I O N
Artist statement
I was born in Santiago de Chile but have lived most of my life in Europe – in France, Italy and Germany. It was in Germany that I found the city that has most influenced me as a person and as a visual artist: Berlin. I arrived in Berlin when it still had the wall surrounding it, when it belonged to the Allies and not to the Federal Republic of Germany. It had a privileged status to nurture a subculture that was distanced from the mainstream and from conservative ways of life. In the 90s, I did a lot of ‘gallery art’. After many years working in that scene in Berlin, I grew frustrated with the atmosphere in the galleries, the “us and between us” attitude, the lack of direct feedback from the public of my artistic proposals, the elitist media and the conventional notion of just having some pictures hanging on a wall in a room. So, I decided to leave all this and to make my art available to a different public – to “regular” people – through platforms like album artwork, indie magazines and later on various digital outlets. That being said, I am in love with printed material. For me, my work on a screen exists only in a temporary state – it only really starts to exist when it materializes. At the moment, after spending a lifetime in Europe, I find myself in my native country, Chile. My ideal life situation would be to live and work in my 1987 Volkswagen van that’s been restored as a motor home. My mobile studio, to be here or there, to have my
drawing materials, my graphite pencils, paper, my laptop and to be able to work from wherever I am. Then, to be connected to the world via the Internet to be able to spread my work – to me this is indispensible. My models for my drawings are the characters of the world around me. Advertising poses, artificial smiles, the product that solves everything, be happy, have fun... the banal, the ridiculous, the pornographic, the obscene, the aggressive. In short, everything that accompanies me in my daily life as a citizen of the Western world. My work has a kind of unfinished style, of something in progress, a draft. The draft, as opposed to a finished work, represents the idea of what something could be. I like the stroke of the graphite pencil because of its flexibility; it’s hard and soft at the same time and has a great variety of shades and hues. It’s the tool I started to draw with in my childhood and I’ve never left it. I attempted to leave it a few times, I tried using other drawing tools but in the end, I always came back to the graphite. It’s where I feel comfortable. My experiments with liquid paint almost always ended in disaster. I could never control these liquids that I was supposed to apply on the canvas with a tool that I was also never able to master: the paintbrush. I like drawing because of its modesty and for being introverted. Painting, on the other hand, has something spectacular and bombastic about it. Drawing is discrete, it doesn’t deceive and it doesn’t dazzle.
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This is precisely the power of visual art – the ambiguous, the interpretable – the more paths a work offers, the more possibilities it will offer the viewer in order to complete it and make it their own.
Drawing is one of the oldest, most basic human activities, born shortly after thought and consciousness; therefore it’s an archaic activity. It’s a craft that has remained the same in its essence for thousands of years. I’m probably the same guy that was drawing deer, horses and bison in a cave 10,000 years ago. I don’t expect my work to be aesthetically “beautiful”, I’m more interested in plotting a thought. The more distant a drawing is of realistic representation, then the closer it is to the symbol, and this is the context I want to explore. All I do is basically portray the world in which I live. A while ago a friend of mine saw my drawings and told me that they seemed harsh and somewhat aggressive. “I wonder in which period of your life you did this work,” she said to me. I explained to her that my works are not self-portraits. The fact that my work has something harsh or aggressive in it doesn’t mean that I as a person am like that. That formula seems too simple to me. I see no direct influence in my work of any artist in particular. In any case, it’s certain that
my work should be categorized within the most representative movement of our time: Pop. In the end, the greatest influence on my work has been the abundance of visual stimuli of the postmodern world. The exaggeration of the image, the “too much” and the overall aesthetic of the time – the fast, the ugly, bad taste, the oversized, the excess. Personally I don’t really like to explain my work too much, I prefer to say: What I do is what you see. What I meant to say is what you understood. This is precisely the power of visual art – the ambiguous, the interpretable – the more paths a work offers, the more possibilities it will offer the viewer in order to complete it and make it their own. I merely sketch the idea, it’s the viewer who finishes it. Art is a craft and a way of life. To be an artist is a euphoric act of engaging with life, always trying to gain a broad perspective on everything. Even if it’s for a short moment, for a second. From above, from a distance or from up close, before falling and becoming part of the observed once again. ∆
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STREET ART
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GANZEER the art of protest Text by Kirsti Anna Urpa Photos by Mostafa Hussein, Adham Bakry, Caroline Palla, Mehri Khalil, Dora Dalila, Eva Frapiccini & Nour El Refai www.ganzeer.com
Photo by Mostafa Hussein
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raffiti has always been around. From Paleolithic paintings to etchings found on the walls of Pompeii; from allegory chiseled into medieval churches to the scrawls on the West side of the Berlin Wall – graffiti has traveled with us through the ages as an outlet of proclamation for the everyday man. Whether premeditated or impromptu, graffiti facilitates an avenue of articulation for the afflictions and ideas we need to voice. From bathroom stalls to ten-story buildings, graffiti is hard to ignore. And it’s everywhere. When the unimaginable happens, we turn to art to impart what we can’t compress into words. Through beauty or horror, graffiti gives a platform for expression to those who can’t (or won’t) parade their ideas in a conventional gallery. But, like any form of art, the majority of graffiti is either mediocre – or worse. Once in a rare while, though, a bright light streaks through a mass of illegible scribbles and incomprehensible caricatures. One such beacon of ability is the work of Ganzeer. Awkwardly famed as the ‘Egyptian Banksy,’ the designer known as Ganzeer turned to the streets with a fist full of stickers to brandish his own incarnations of protest. He made waves in Cairo, splashing artwork all over its arteries during the revolution in January 2011. Shortly after, he was repudiated on public television and deemed a terrorist with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. He recalls being branded the leader of an “international art collective that is bent on destroying the image of the Egyptian military.” Shortly after an arrest for illicit posters and a swift escape from under the shadow of Fatwa, Ganzeer emigrated from Egypt and has moved on to explore new territory.
When I spoke with Ganzeer in late November, we talked briefly about his childhood, studying at university to become a banker, his time at an art residence in Finland and his eventual move to the States. A cheery guy, Ganzeer seemed to enjoy discussing his work and his ambitions at length. Although he is renowned for his street art in Cairo, Ganzeer’s artistic focus has shifted away from social turmoil in Egypt. He has been utilizing his own brand of unrelenting satire to comment on the American society that he currently inhabits, as well as working on his first graphic novel. The exhibition he held in New York last year was an audacious criticism of American culture. “It’s very obvious to an outsider, coming into America. I’ve been to so many other countries outside of Egypt and I never got that shock (anywhere else) of ‘What the hell is going on here!?’ Everything is just... empty.” When you witness his work, it becomes clear that Ganzeer isn’t afraid to draw connections between pop culture imagery and the ugly underbelly of American sociopolitical realities. He isn’t daunted by his past experiences with authority and continues to challenge public awareness. And while he might not like me saying so, he has a perspective that doesn’t often grace the gallery scene here in the West.
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Photo above and on opposite page by Adham Bakry
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The most valuable resource you have is time. It’s not anything else. It’s not what you have, it’s not things. Honestly, it’s time, because time is the only thing you don’t have control of… so make the best out of your time, make sure whatever you do counts. Ganzeer has been very public about his unwillingness to be defined by his nationality. That being said, his experiences give him a unique and fresh perspective on a number of global issues and how things are so intricately connected to each other. The direct relationship of arms exports from the US and the number of deaths on the streets of Cairo, for instance, is something with which he is all too familiar. “The police now (in Cairo) have been getting more weapons from the US, they walk around with military grade rifles and serious protection – things that you never saw before the revolution.” Ganzeer admits he never thought he’d end up living in the States. Actually, he never even intended to become an artist. “I was never into fine art or anything like that.” And when I asked him what his parents think about what he does – he simply retorted, “They don’t like it, of course. They never liked anything I did. Revolution or not, politics or not, street art or not... I don’t think they were happy with it.” Apparently the winding river of Ganzeer’s life has landed him quite far from where his parents had intended. “Well, like every Egyptian parent, they expected that I would grow up to be a doctor or an engineer”. He explains that, while he didn’t get very good grades in school, he eventually ended up getting a degree in business. He jokes that he never did anything with his credentials. But it wasn’t a complete waste of time, as Ganzeer used what he learned in school to etch out a strong web design business before ever dipping his toes into the turbulent world of street art. Now that he’s
had enough of merchandisable dissent, he continues to expand his horizons and plans to dive, head first, into the vast ocean of illustrated alternate universes. Since the time he first donned his rebel cap (back in the good old days of revolution and stickers), Ganzeer has stepped out of the street scene and embraced a plethora of other talents. Much like contemporaries such as Ai WeiWei, Ganzeer possesses an array of artistic identities. He’s a writer, he’s done installations and videos, and now he’s moved on to his ultimate passion: comic books. “My dad would often go on business trips abroad and bring back comic books because he knew I liked them.” It seems the captivating visuals in these stories of rebellion and underdogs may have influenced a young Ganzeer, shaping his views of our world and sparking an interest in writing his own stories. “I was always daydreaming and drawing.” Then it took him a while to discover that making art was something that he really wanted to do. “I felt like maybe I wasn’t a good enough artist… the Internet happened, and I saw all of these young people on these comic book forums... at that age I decided that maybe I’d be a better writer. During those years I was writing a lot of short stories… but they were all crap.” Ganzeer’s talent has ballooned over the years. However, as with most artists, he is still far out at sea from the shores of satiation. I asked him what he would say to a younger Ganzeer if he could get his hands on a time machine: “I would probably tell him to stop messing around and maybe draw every day.” When asked if he had any advice for young artists today, he contemplated: “The most valuable resource you have is time. It’s not anything else. It’s not what you have, it’s not things. Honestly, it’s time, because time is the only thing you don’t have control of… so make the best out of your time, make sure whatever you do counts.”
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the space between Photography by Ornella Fieres Working with both analogue and digital photographs, Ornella’s work is concerned with how we perceive and interact with the world. We live in an era where images unreservedly mix reality and fantasy, causing us to experience reality and simulation without any differences. Furthermore, the digital age has brought upon acceptance of the notion of multiple realities, where boundaries between the virtual, the visual, the simulated, the haptic and the digital have become fundamentally blurred. Here, Ornella presents works from the series “1887”, “Fading Away” and “Interferenz IV”. The works in the series “1887” are Photoshopped versions of NASA images that depict stellar formations. The artist then converts these manipulated images into slides subsequently exposing them using a slide duplicator and sunlight on sensitive film. The result is a kind of nostalgic yet ghostly conception of our galaxy.
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Photo by Carlos Hernandez
B R OT H E R S M OV I N G Interview by Dion Lucas Photos by Carlos Hernandez, Aud Lew, Chang Han Gabriela Uweis & Ricardo Kuettel www.brothersmoving.dk
Three brothers from Denmark ventured across the water to NYC to try their luck in the sleepless city. There they met their fourth ‘brother’, so to speak, and formed the band “Brothers Moving”, an essentially street-oriented band that has gained widespread appeal thanks to viral videos of their street performances. Composed of Simon, Nils, Esben and Aske, the band’s philosophy revolves around the spontaneity and interaction achieved when playing on the streets, something that they consider to be the basis of their sound. The band members continue to discover and connect with the unique space that is New York City, “a city bustling with energy and ambition,” as they describe it – as well as travel around the country and
overseas to tour, be it in venues or in public spaces. The band just came back from a short tour in Russia, where they had the chance to play the Gogol Center in Moscow and the Erarta Theatre in St. Petersburg. A documentary about a 21-day tour around the US where they solely played on the streets and in national parks is expected to be released soon. As for the future, they’ve had overwhelming requests from fans in South America to head down their way. Composing new material for their set, which may lead to a couple of releases soon as well as possibly an album, is also part of the plan. We caught up with the band to chat a bit about their experiences in the NYC street scene and the musical values they share.
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What brought you all together to form this band? SIMON: First of all, Esben, Aske and I are brothers, so we’ve played together since childhood. The band Brothers Moving was formed with Nils during a 10day trip to New York. We received overwhelming feedback and had to go back. What’s the story behind the name “Brothers Moving”? While playing in Union Square, our street audience started asking for our name. We had been brainstorming a bit but couldn’t come up with anything good. One afternoon, on our way to an Erykah Badu concert in Prospect Park, our taxi drove by this huge yellow building with big capital letters across with the name “BROTHERS MOVING”. I believe it was Esben who said, “It makes so much sense! We’re brothers, we move in our performance and we travel constantly.” Of course back then, being Danish tourists, we had no idea we took the name from a moving company. What’s the street music scene like in NYC? And what about in terms of legality? SIMON: When we started playing the streets of NYC back in 2008, we wanted the ultimate challenge. We figured that if we could make it on the streets of New York, then we’d done it. People are talented and the acts are diverse and plentiful. Basically, you have two scenes for street acts. One is outside squares and parks. They are favorable when weather permits it. Secondly, you have the subway spots. We have played both, but outside is easier for us to create the large crowds. The subways can be quite noisy. For the subway, we got a permit through MUNY (Music Under New York), which holds a yearly audition, and provides permits to the best performances. You can play without, but there is a good chance that either the police or another act with a permit will move you. For playing outside, it’s become much tougher the past years. It used to be that as long as you don’t bother anyone, you’re fine. Today they have this long set of rules, and of course, the small battery amp we are using for bass is making it almost impossible. The trick is to create a crowd of happy people. Then most police officers don’t dare to move you. Photos on this page, from top to bottom, by: Chang Han Aud Lew Unknown
The city has this interesting dilemma: At first, you love it, and can't get enough of new impressions, cultures and endless opportunities. Then, after a while, it starts to feel as if the city is slowly taking over your life.
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Photo by Aud Lew
Do you find NYC a challenging city to grow as a band? Or on the contrary, do you find it gives you opportunities that perhaps other cities might not give you? SIMON: NYC is a city bustling with energy and ambition. One day you can play the streets of Union Square. The next you find yourself with management and playing Stella McCartney fashion shows. We’ve used the phrase “only in New York” a bunch of times. You never know what will happen, and things move fast here. If you have the right energy, NYC is a great place to grow as a band. The competition is fierce, and because of that, it’s hard to get paid gigs in venues. But the money is on the streets for sure. NILS: There’s an extremely high amount of bands in New York. If you go to Williamsburg or Bushwick, everybody is a musician. It can be good and bad. There’s great musical feedback all over but also incredible competition to be in the spotlight. The sky-high rent these days makes it almost impossible for most NY musicians to make a living only by playing music. Do you guys do anything else to make a living? SIMON: For a couple of years we all did nothing but music. We lived together in an apartment in Brooklyn, we worked together, ate together and partied together.
We did everything as a band and played almost every day. It was an intense period but it definitely helped develop our sound and groove a lot. Today we do other stuff too. Esben and I are teachers, Aske is a carpenter and Nils has recently been managing the bookings at a music venue in Brooklyn. While being 100% dedicated to the band was great in many ways, I think doing our own thing on the side can add inspiration as well. Do you find that the city inspires you creatively? Or do you find it intimidating? NILS: To get good creative material out of New York, I think the city needs to be taken in doses. The city has this interesting dilemma: At first, you love it, and can't get enough of new impressions, cultures, and endless opportunities. Then after a while, it starts to feel as if the city is slowly taking over your life. As if It’s sucking out your energy, dragging you down and you feel stuck. You need to save the last bit of that energy for the escape! The funny thing is, the moment you leave you immediately start to miss it so much, that you know you have to go back. NY has a heavy energy, both good and bad. It’s an emotional roller coaster really. At times, I find it quite hard reaching that balance of being creatively productive in the middle of this madness. That being said, it definitely gives you plenty of potential material to build
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on. One of the great things about NY (and being a street musician in general) is that you keep meeting interesting and different people. These people will most likely inspire you one way or another. Where else do you get your inspiration? NILS: The interesting thing about this band is that our musical influences are notably different from one another. We’ve always been pretty keen on trying to incorporate as many of the differences as we can into our sound. Aske and I favor American roots music, like country and delta blues. Esben likes artists such as Led Zeppelin and Donovan. Simon listens to soul and funk music. We’re all big on backing vocals, both Beatles and gospel-style. That must be challenging, to find a middle point between all your preferred musical genres. When it comes to composing, do you guys get along well? NILS: Even though we favor different genres, I’d say our fundamental musical taste is pretty similar. I also think we developed our sound before we shaped a style. Actually, I don’t think we ever really decided on a style. In terms of composing, we do get along pretty well. We’re not big on rehearsing, but we almost always have fun arranging dynamics, small details, timing etc. It’s not so
much about genre but more about energy for us. I have often worked on lyrics with Esben, but we have a pretty mutual understanding of what works. In many cases, he’s the one who has to sing it, so it’s important that he feels comfortable doing that. And comfort is huge in our band because so much of it is the performance. SIMON: The way I see it, it’s the fusion of musical genres that creates the sound we have today. Because of that, I feel like we all respect each other’s preferences and make that play a part in the final tweaking of a composition. When a composition or just an idea for a song is being presented to the rest of the band, we need to play it over and over again to feel comfortable in it. The best way to do this is to take it to the streets and see how people react. That is when we all find our role in the song, and slowly develop the final composition. What role does spontaneity and “going with the flow” play in your musical ethos? SIMON: The reason we keep coming back to the streets is because of the spontaneity. It’s hard to create the same level of interaction and dialogue with the audience from a stage. The element of surprise is very important to us. Part of this is due to expectations; when we perform on the streets we can take people completely by surprise. Photo by Gabriela Uweis
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A part of our performance and music is based on what happens during a set. You always have to adapt to the unknown factors. The police arrive, a child starts dancing, a guy wants to jam with you, you break a string. Whatever happens, we go with the flow, and we’re successful when the crowd responds positively. It’s what keeps it exciting. A lot of what we learned about performance comes from the street, and I hope that we’ll keep coming back. These days it’s refreshing to see musicians who aren’t in it for the money and commercial success. As authentic music-makers, what advice would you give to aspiring musicians out there? NILS: What makes you think that we’re not in it for the money? (laughs) I think no matter what you do, it’s important to stay true to the things you are passionate about. If you’re passionate about money, it really doesn’t make any sense to get into music at all. Music has to be driven by a completely different force. Like eagerness to create and to perform. SIMON: Be yourself, and make sure to enjoy music every day. If you’re not enjoying it when you play, something needs to change. It’s our experience that if you keep on doing what you love, it’s going to happen for you sooner or later. Keep radiating love for what you do, and people will respond to that. We were talking about the role of spontaneity in music. What are the differences between playing on the streets and playing in concert venues? Do you like one more than the other? NILS: As Simon mentioned earlier, it’s the spontaneity and the level of interaction that makes the streets exciting. The foundation of our band and our sound comes from there. I think that we’ll always see the streets as our home. This is where we’re the most comfortable. There are no expectations except for our own. It can be tough bringing the surprising elements into the venues, but at the same time, I think the challenge of exactly that is quite attractive to us. If there’s an opportunity for us to develop and to radiate our music on a larger scale, we’ll take it. Often we’ve been trying to combine the two; playing the streets to promote our gigs at venues. It works like a charm.
Top photo on this page by Ricardo Kuettel Middle and bottom photo by Chang Han
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Do you like going on tour? SIMON: We love sharing our music with as many people as possible and touring can be a great way of doing that. A challenge for our band is to translate our act from the street to the stage. We recently played theaters in Moscow and St. Petersburg in front of full houses. It was a great experience and we hope to come back soon. NILS: A huge part of our band is based on ‘the experience’. The freedom of traveling combined with playing music is attractive to me. Being ‘out there’ together, seeing new places and meeting new people. And you don’t have to do much to connect, music does that automatically for you. The challenge can be that it’s usually pretty hard work. What do you struggle with the most during the creative process of writing new songs? NILS: In general I think one of the hardest parts of writing, is the process of turning the idea into an actual composition. An important part of the foundation in Brothers Moving songs is to keep things simple – at least as a start. It’s funny because we like to have this attitude that we’re all open and “jammin”, while in reality we’re all quite picky about what we play and how we sound. That makes it quite challenging to write a fitting song because we all have to feel good about it. Or at least, we
have to feel good about our individual parts of it, for it to work. Looking at our instrumental setup, we only have a few simple tools to play with. In this sense, we’ve always been perfectionists about groove, harmonies, tempo and dynamics. You said you believe in positivity for anything you do in life. Do you think you can inject positivity into the world with good musical vibes? On a larger scale, do you think music has the power to change the world? SIMON: Well that might be pushing it a little, but yeah, absolutely. Art, including music, is a universal language that everybody can relate to. When I see an American, a Russian or a Brazilian singing along to one of our Danish tunes, that makes me happy. The fact that they don’t know the meaning of the lyrics doesn’t matter. The intention is still communicated. NILS: I think that music has always been one of the most powerful natural tools to spread and receive energy. Both positive and negative. Music has been with us since the dawn of human history, and it’s been used for gathering people and connecting. We’re all constantly using it for its ability to apply a certain state into our minds. Music creates movements and I can’t imagine what our world would look like without it. ∆
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ILLUSTRATION
RICARDO PARKER I L LU S T R AT I O N Artist statement www.ricardoxparker.com
As a kid, I always liked to draw. I had sketchbooks full of doodles and created my own comics influenced by Dragon Ball and Samurai X. Then I had my graffiti phase with my friends during my teenage years, drawing letters and characters on walls around the city. Hiphop culture also always had a big influence on me – the beats and the 90s videos full of vibrant colors. Then I started learning more about the illustration world, I began to take it more seriously to try to find my own style and my way of doing things. I try to illustrate every day. Sometimes I can’t because of my day job, but hopefully soon I’ll join a studio with other artists to feel some creative energy and be more productive. My work is based on ideas or a phrase, quote or photo that I’ve seen. I always start by drawing with my pencil in my sketchbook – I’m not comfortable starting to draw directly on the computer. I basically draw anywhere I can, but mainly I draw at home, listening to music that relaxes me or listening to podcasts. I have a lot of influences, be it illustrators, street artists, designers or photographers, like ETAM CRU, Jamie Brownie, ARYZ, Waone, 13th Witness, Evidence, Jason Goldwatch... I get inspiration from them and many others. I like artists that use a lot of bright colors and characters with a lot of detail, maybe because they invoke memories of cartoons I watched as a kid, but I think that in general that’s clearly reflected in my work. Now as I’m progressing, I’m noticing that I’m simplifying my work more and more. Let’s see where all this goes.
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THE GRAFFITI GALS Text by Maresa Harvey Photography by Alexandra Henry www.warmipaint.com
Empowering, nurturing & recognizing the leading ladies of today’s street art scene In late 2015, emerging and established female talents working across genres of street art, mural painting, graffiti and tagging met in Quito, Ecuador at the invitation of festival producers Maria “Toofly” Castillo and Ache Vallejo. An all women’s festival, Warmi Paint was designed to create a new platform in Ecuador for contributors and audiences to share in the work of local as well as international street artists. Warmi means ‘woman’ in Quechua, a native South American language spoken in the central Andes region. Cultural heritage and women empowerment in the street art scene were key motifs of the festival. It’s a challenge for this growing community of female artists to set new standards for their practice in a critical and competitive environment. Nevertheless, Castillo and Vallejo decided to take the challenge. We caught up with Maria ‘Toofly’ Castillo and documentarian Alexandra Henry to talk about how this event came together and what opportunities it offered those involved.
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The Ecuadorian society’s impression of street art is also somewhat different: “they still see us like these little graffiti kids that want to do these graffiti things and they hate it. They think it’s vandalism. So you have to educate people, the society; have lots of events, conferences, be in the news… everybody is just kind of behind on the times here. They’re not up to date on what’s happening in Europe or the States, it’s just extremely frustrating to do the level of work that we want to do. It’s good that we did it, we set an example and you know, [laughs] someone else can take it from there.’ Interestingly, for the international artists who traveled to Quito from around the world, with far more streamlined and efficient experiences of painting in festivals, there was a lot to learn from the Ecuadorian community and the essentially DIY approach of a society that doesn’t have access to the same resources as more developed countries. “There’s this cultural thing there, in the States we grew up differently. We’re more absorbed with television and pop culture, so we lose a lot of our cultural connection with our roots. We’re always painting cool shit or cool letters that have no substance. But the stuff that people having been doing over here – it has a lot of depth. Just by looking at it, you can tell there are a lot of cultural layers and stories and political views and messages. So you start asking questions and you start learning about all these beliefs, customs, patterns and symbols from Inca traditions and pre-Columbian art. There is this whole other level of communication coming from the art that’s being put out there… this is just something that doesn’t happen in the States.” But not all female street artists adhere to these woman-specific events. Fostering a supportive community of female artists seems to be a strong starting point that acts as the springboard to encourage female street artists, but what happens next? What if these women no longer want to participate in women-only festivals and want to be seen in a non-gender specific environment? Alexandra Henry, an American photographer and producer who has been documenting female street artists
around the world, made her way down to Quito to document the festival and also to showcase one of her projects. Alexandra began to document the graffiti and street art scene in Los Angeles and for the past three years has been working on a project entitled “Street Heroines”. What began with her taking images on film cameras developed into a series of short film vignettes that talk to individual female street artists about their work and shows them in action on the streets of their cities. This collection of work is what Alexandra was asked to
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There is this whole other level of communication coming from the art that’s being put out there… this is just something that doesn’t happen in the States.
present at Warmi Paint, since her travels and her work have led her to become somewhat of an expert on female street artists. I asked Alexandra about the pressure that women face to ensure that they get noticed and their choice to participate in female festival. From her persepective, “…some women feel like they have been fighting the fight for so long. Not that they give up but they have found some sort of inner confidence that they decide they no longer want to participate in female-only events. They think, ‘I want to be on the same level as guys… I see these guys and I work twice, three times as hard as them, I'm just as talented, if not more, and it’s time for me to get the recognition.’ Maybe that’s an artist’s ego, but I think when it’s coming from the vein of ‘no, I'm a woman and I’m really talented, I know I have what it takes to make it’, I think that’s a frustrating point for a lot of artists who are well along in their career to still have to be fighting for recognition and credit.” Because of this, many female artists are finding ways to gain recognition without having to promote themselves through emphasizing their gender. Partly this may come down to the quality of work being produced by such female artists, but partly it may come down to audiences being better educated about who is creating what and those women who are showing that they’re capable of producing incredible work. But by having initiated female-only street art events like the Warmi Paint festival, women have the opportunity to choose whether or not to participate in such events and undoubtedly they have given platforms to female artists that may have not had any other opportunities otherwise. The exposure these types of events are creating for women as a collective are allowing them to make their forays into being recognized within the wider street art context. Initiating a new platform for street art to be received and investing in an emerging community of female street artists, Toofly has helped foster an appreciation for the history of the controversial art form and has helped gain recognition for the women who are key contemporary contributors to the scene. ∆
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A R T I S T S T A T E M E N T: I L L U S T R A T I O N
TEDDY KANG I L LU ST RAT I O N
Artist statement teddyteddykang.tumblr.com
I am a Toronto-based illustrator originally from China. I’ve always had a passion for drawing. Whenever I hold a pen to draw, I feel alive and I fall in love with drawing over and over again. For my work, I work with computer, a graphic tablet and Photoshop, as well as a sketchbook or a bunch of paper to draw rough sketches. Paper and pencil is key because when inspiration hits, you better have paper with you because it can disappear from one second to the next!
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