graffiti Archives - Page 3 of 6

Toz and The Seller of Happiness

18/03/2013/7 Comments/in Art and culture

During my first 6 months in Rio, my journey to work took me past the long wall that runs opposite Jardim Botânico. This wall is covered with some of Rio’s finest graffiti and because I passed it every day I was soon familiar with every piece on the wall.

As well as recognising the individual works, after a while I started to recognise the characters and styles of the different artists too. One of my favourites was a guy called Toz (real name Tomaz Viana) and the collective he was part of, the Fleshbeck Crew.

Toz calls these colourful characters “Shimu”. Their cheerful, mischievous faces pop up all over Rio.

Toz (sounds like ‘Toyzh’) has been in the news a lot recently – his enormous work in the port area of Rio deservedly gained a lot of attention.

But I wanted to tell you about another piece of Toz’s work. I was wandering through Gávea about 6 months ago when I saw this:

Street Art Adding Colour to Rio

28/02/2013/11 Comments/in Art and culture

Regular readers will know that I have a soft-spot for street art. I know it’s not to everyone’s liking and some people even have quite strong objections to what they see as ugly vandalism, but I like it. Having said that, I definitely have more trouble with the pixação so common in São Paulo – while street art (in my eyes at least) makes places less ugly and more interesting, pixação seems to do the opposite.

Today I wanted to illustrate the positive effects of street art in Rio. Praça Quinze de Novembro is a large open square in Rio’s Centro (downtown) neighbourhood. Running straight through the middle of Praça Quinze is the Elevado da Perimetral, an overpass or flyover. Take a look at the scene back in February 2012, taken from Google Maps Street View:

Dark and imposing – the Elevado Perimetral running through the middle of Praça Quinze. Photo from Google Maps Street View

João and Maria Ninguém

21/08/2012/7 Comments/in Art and culture, Language

Today I’m going to pick up from where I left off in the last post with João Gilberto’s seminal album Chega de Saudade. One of the songs on the album is a light, lilting number titled Maria Ninguém (“ninguém” is Portuguese for nobody/no one). If you don’t know the song, here is a link (be warned, it can get stuck in your head for days…).

As you may recall, I was listening to this music back in London, meaning my usual Brazilian cultural encyclopedia (AKA Mrs Eat Rio) was not around. It was only when I got back to Brazil that I discovered that Maria Ninguém has a husband named João and that this couple are actually figures of speech!

This is the work of Alberto Serrano, AKA Tito Na Rua. We’ll come back to this at the end…

Brazil: apathy-free zone?

02/08/2012/11 Comments/in Musings

During my time in Brazil I’ve noticed that young Brazilians seem to lack the apathy that is common in many of their British contemporaries. It is quite normal to see Brazilian teenagers and 20-somethings wearing t-shirts bearing environmental messages: “Save Water!”, “Protect Mother Earth!”. Their British counterparts wouldn’t be seen dead in a t-shirt which was this earnest! They would snort derisively and read out the slogan in a mocking voice. “Oh yeah, ‘Save the Planet’ man.”

Take a look at this:

I spotted this as I was walking in Santa Teresa recently and it occurred to me that simple, positive messages like this are quite rare back in Britain.

Waiting for the Bondinho

06/07/2012/3 Comments/in Art and culture

The Bondinho (sounds like bon-JEEN-yo) is the name used by the people of Rio for the little yellow trams that used to trundle along the steep and winding streets of Santa Teresa (the neighbourhood that I currently call home). They would make their way from the hills of Santa, across the amazing arches of Arcos da Lapa and end up in Centro (downtown Rio). They were sweet, rickety old things, clanking and shaking as they made their way up and down the hills, almost always full to overflowing with a mix of locals and tourists – it was common to see people hanging off the edges as the street-cars went by.

Quintessential image of Santa Teresa in happier days.

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