Jeff Soto will be opening his fourth solo show at Jonathan LeVine Gallery on September 8th, alongside the simultaneous solo shows of Audrey Kawasaki and Judith Supine. The show, entitled Decay and Overgrowth, explores life, death and the passage of time. In this interview, Soto tells Vandalog about the emotional journey this past year has taken him on, including the death of two of his grandparents, and how these events provoked his consideration of mortality; which would become a central theme of this show.
V: In your own words, can you tell us about the underlying themes of Decay and Overgrowth? JS: I started researching my ancestry about seven years ago, well, even before that really. As a kid I knew my grandparents fought in WWII and my grandma would list off all the things we had in us- Irish, Italian, Sioux, Dutch, etc.. These stories were interesting to me. So from an early age I was aware that there is some history there, and at some point a teacher I had showed us family trees. When I was a teenager I saw Norman Rockwell’s family tree painting where the kid’s ancestors were pirates and Native Americans and cowboys. It got me interested in who my ancestors were, and how all my living relatives were related.
The last few years I have researched and got deeper into who these people were. Decay and Overgrowth comes out of this research. Finding all these relatives really drove home the point that we are born, we have kids, get married, live our life and die. And then the kids repeat the same pattern. Our offspring who come into the world like new flowers, growing and flourishing, eventually meet the same fate as any other living thing. We start aging, and at some point we all will die. We turn to dust, go back into the Earth to nourish it, and then the cycle repeats. I don’t see it as morbid at all, and I hope the paintings don’t seem too death obsessed! Even though I’ve unofficially titled my show “The Skull Show”.
V: This is a solo show, but you’re showing at the same time as Audrey Kawasaki’s and Judith Supine’s solo shows. How do you feel like this combination of works either compliment or juxtapose one another? JS: I respect both of them. I know Audrey a bit but have never met Judith. I think as a whole our work is very different but individually we’re each very strong in what we do. Should be a fun show with something for everyone. I am predicting a large turnout.
V: Was this exploration of mortality more of a catharsis for you or a way of explaining death to your children? JS: It’s more for me I guess. They’re too young to fully understand death. We do not hide it from them at all, you know, like if one of our fish dies or we find a dead rabbit on a walk, we talk about it. Two of my grandparents passed away in the last year, and they went to the funerals even though they’re young. I never really thought about death because it was not around me. Or maybe it’s an age thing- now that I’m in my mid/late 30’s and I have two kids that depend on me, it’s on my mind. Seeing my little brothers grow up and my parents age has been a trip.
V: What do you think your generation adds to the collective human experience? JS: I think it’s too early to say. There’s good and bad things we’re going to add. I know that my generation seems more open to cultural differences among people. In the United States, overall we’re less racist than 40 years ago, and I think the next generation will be better than us. There’s still a long way to go but the situation is improving from the Baby Boomers and previous generations.
And of course the internet has made huge changes. For the first time in human history information is easily accessible to most people. It is empowering. Maybe it’s homogenizing us as well. It’s that whole globalization thing, we all buy the same products, listen to the same music and watch the same movies- are cultural differences starting to die out? Technology is good and bad I think. I’m 37, so I grew up with Atari which was fun, but only for about 30 minutes then we’d go outside and build a fort, climb a tree, make up a game… we used our imagination! I think that’s lacking in many kids and I wonder how it will change things. Maybe it already has. I graduated high school right as the internet was going mainstream- 1993. Our school had one computer that was online and the only thing we could access was college libraries in town. We had to search and hunt for our info, we had to go downtown and pour through a ton of books and along the way we would find other interesting books and much more thoroughly researched information. Now all the info is easily and quickly accessed in a nice little five paragraph web page. I do love Wikipedia, but 20 years ago you’d read a 300 page book on say, Cortés, now a kid in high school will read a concise web page on the iPad. Maybe that’s not so bad, I guess the Wiki entry would have much more up to date info… see, technology that this generation is bringing is both good and bad.
You know him. Rudy Giuliani knows him. At one point, half of the city thought Madonna knew him biblically (for more on that subject, hold your breath for Part two). COST has been ubiquitous in New York City since the late 80’s. He and his counterpart REVS are two of the most widely recognized characters in graffiti and have produced some of the longest running pieces in New York. Nothing captured COST and REVS’ domination of New York in the 90’s better than this Videograff video which asks “Is this art or dangerous propaganda?”
After working under the radar for a number of years after his 1994 arrest, COST has participated in a select few projects with brands such as Brooklynite, Showpaper and Supreme since the fall of 2010. Within the last few months, you may have seen the name COST appearing around New York City again. Despite this, he’s let the work speak for itself and shied away from the spotlight. Vandalog is pleased to publish the first major interview with this reclusive graffiti legend since his 1994 interview with Art Forum. In part one of this interview, COST discusses getting arrested, his hiatus that followed, doing graffiti against the grain and his resurgence among the latest generation of street artists.
V: Why haven’t you tried to make yourself a presence on the internet?
COST: I stay off the internet. The internet is like poison. It really is. I don’t want my face on the internet. There’s a lot of misinterpretation. Anyone can be anyone, say anything. On Facebook there are two people who are posing as me. Things like that make me, I guess, bitter toward the internet.
It’s a good way to connect, that’s true. But I think true graffiti artists have a disconnect with a lot of things in this world. At least I do. I stay disconnected- try to stay disconnected from a lot of stuff and that’s part of why I try to stay off the internet as much as I can. I mean, I’m on a little bit, but there are people out there creating a whole graffiti world on the internet; websites and storylines, bios, all that. They’re selling themselves on the internet and I don’t want to do that.
V: During your wheatpasting campaign the posters that had a phone number received a lot of attention. To be general, why did you do this? And do you think that was the 1993 version of putting, say, “www.COST.com” up like graffiti artists are frequently doing today?
COST: During that time period nobody was doing it. That was a way for the public to contact us. You know, get a little feedback on the shenanigans we pulled around the city. We were having fun, trying to keep it pure and doing what we wanted to do if it felt right at the time and hopefully – maybe not now, but then it was a different thing than what everybody was doing. We were speaking out to the public. So the phone number was kind of like an opportunity for the public to respond or reach back to us and say things. And they had a lot to say.
V: I mean, it is kind of intimidating to see a phone number on a wheatpaste. You don’t know why or why not to call it, or what to be ready for. I dialed it but got nothing. COST: Well it’s nothing now, but we used to change it up about once a week. Rudy Giuliani was the mayor and he was trying to clean up New York, and obviously if you look around New York now it’s a different town. He cleaned it up. But on the voicemail we went on political rants, spoke about art, philosophy, whatever was on our minds. We spit it out onto the voicemail and it was freedom of speech. That was the beauty of it. We were saying what we wanted, when we wanted and anyone could dial in – for what? ten cents? – Whatever a payphone cost at the time. You never knew what you were gonna hear on it. If I had a bitter day and I was a bitter guy that day and I had something to say about it, I would say it. We didn’t hold back. We said what we felt and what was true to us, REVS and myself. Initially a few people called and before you knew it, thousands of people were calling a day. It kind of got a little out of hand. Checking in on the voicemail, we got everything from death threats to marriage proposals to people telling us to just get a life.
V: What did you think of that?
COST: Some of it was inspiring. Some of it was… some of it would make us go out and do more, you know? It added fuel to the fire. We were young, in our mid twenties – a very rebellious age. I’m 43 now, you get older and mellow out a little bit. We were young and rebellious so we wanted to vent and to tell the city that we didn’t like how it was being run and wanted to switch it up a little bit. We wanted to mix things up, add a little flavor, switch things around. I’m glad people recognize that now.
The funny thing is that now that there’s an international street art boom, it’s like people are remembering it a little more, but at the time it was almost looked down upon. During that time period a lot of people didn’t like what we were doing. They didn’t consider it art because it was very um… neanderthal.
Graffiti at one point got so perfect where everybody was doing perfect lines and the art was so over-perfected. If somebody did a perfect line, we painted a drippy line that dripped everywhere.
Photo by shoehorn99
V: Intentionally?
COST: Yeah. We were doing everything against the grain. We just went against the grain of every graffiti and street art standard of the time. A lot of people were very angry that we were prolific. We were out there every night almost. I would say we were putting pressure on the graffiti scene and the street art scene to question what we were doing. And some of them were upset, you know? Because we were changing the rulebook. I don’t know if we were trying to, we were just doing what felt right. Now there’s a whole new rulebook and now people look back say (I’m not here to toot my own horn) but they say “Oh, you guys did good things and helped influence all the street artists now.” And I’ll take it as a compliment.
V: What kept bringing you back? Every night you kept doing this. What was attractive to you about it?
COST: I can speak for REVS on this as well: Neither of us did graffiti for the love of graffiti. It was more like we actually didn’t like it. We probably hated it. It was just self-expression and it was pure. We were just pouring our heart and soul into the streets, and people can take it or leave it. A lot of people didn’t appreciate it then. But now a lot of people look back and -you’re interviewing me so at least Vandalog, or somebody, recognizes that what we meant was true. I hope you can print that. What we did was true, was being true to ourselves. I’m not sure all the street artists are being true to themselves. They see one mural and someone does a mural just like it. I don’t mean to be critical, there are a lot of talented artists out there. Much more talented than me. But do they have something to say? And that’s really what I question. When I look at art, it has to speak to me. If it doesn’t speak to me than what is it? A beautiful portrait? If you said, “Paint me a portrait,” our waitress will paint a better portrait of you than I can. You know what I mean? It’s about the art. The art needs to speak to you, it needs to move you.
Photo by Press Pause
V: How did the release of your identity after you were arrested affect your personal life as well as your graffiti life, which had before been separate?
COST: It made me go deeper undercover I guess. I crawled into a shell and laid lower than the outlaw Jessie James. All of a sudden people who didn’t know that that was me put two and two together. You don’t want people knowing who you are. The idea was to do graffiti, and the idea behind graffiti was to get your name out there but for others to wonder who the heck was doing it. I never did it for a social purpose. Or a financial purpose. I did graffiti for myself and my cohorts and my crew and that was about it. And once my name got out there, it was exploitation in a sense. That’s how I looked at it. It was pretty harmful. But now that the street art/graffiti culture is so accepted, there’s been less hate and more embrace. So I’m not complaining.
V: There were plenty of ways to keep getting your work up legally. Why did you turn down so many of those opportunities?
COST: After I got caught it just derailed me, like a train. I just went right off track and I got into other things in my life. I was getting a little older, I was in my late twenties. I got into different ventures. I found some success in other areas of my life. I’m trying to figure out how to explain this properly.
It was like I was pushed out of graffiti and street art out by Giuliani and the city with this punishment. They put the cuffs on me and when I was free to roam, I still felt like I had the cuffs on me all the time. I had to make a living so I started a business and I guess I got somewhat successful and I realized that there’s no money in art anyway. There are a few people who make a lot of money off art and then there are the rest; it’s like a pool, a starving pool chasing that dollar. That’s what it seemed like to me. So I got successful in other areas of my life with business and the more successful I got, the more street art and graffiti got away from me. I have my regrets about that because everything I did was very unfulfilling, but I was earning a good living. It left a very empty feeling within because I wasn’t doing what I really wanted to do.
V: Had you done any painting at all during that time?
COST: For the first 5 years after being arrested, I was on hiatus. After that, I painted off and on but it subsided. It felt like I lost my way, like they pushed me out. It’s almost like you choose paths in this life and I wound up going down a different path, and now I really regret it. I feel like I only have about 20 or 25 years to live, I figure 65 years old, anything past that is a blessing. People live longer, but you know what I mean. So I figure with 25 years left to live, anything that I’ve done up to this point since my heavy street art days have been so unfulfilling that I’m going back to street art. I’m willing to sacrifice everything in my life otherwise, at this point. That’s why I’m going back to painting and producing work, because all the money in the world doesn’t give you uh…. what’s the word.. I forgot the word. Shit. You gotta do what feels right in this world and I gotta get back to my painting.
A portion of Hyuro’s finished wall. Photo by Dustin Chambers.
Update: It looks like the latest news, as of August 27th, is that this mural is going to be removed.
My personal favorite mural at this year’s Living Walls Conference (which took place in Atlanta last week and we’ll be covering more from there soon) has to by Hyuro‘s mural in the Lakewood Heights neighborhood. It’s also proved to be the most controversial mural of the conference to date, with some people worried that the mural is too lewd for having in a public space, particular a space nearby a church, a mosque, a lot of street prostitution and a federal prison. Personally, I think the mural brightens up an otherwise drab wall and parking area.
Photo by RJ Rushmore
Hyuro painted a frame-by-frame animation (of 30-some frames) which can be seen by walking down the length of the mural. The animation is of a women growing fur and then shedding that fur, which turns into a wolf and walks away from her. It’s based on an animation she made last year using drawings:
The way I read the mural, it was empowering to women, urging them to be strong and go out into the world with the strength of a wolf. The way I’ve heard Hyuro explain it, the mural is about shedding one’s animal instincts for higher planes of thought. Either way, a great message.
But not every mural is for everyone, and any mural that everyone likes is almost sure to be a boring one. In a thread on the website i-Neighbors, some Lakewood Heights residents have complained that they find the mural offensive, with some even saying that they will now change their usual routes to work or school in order to avoid them or their children seeing it. I had a quick read through of the i-Neighbors posts, and while there are certainly some people who want the mural removed, most of the posts expressing in opinion one way or the other are from people who are okay with the mural or who love it. According to Alex Parrish, Living Walls’ Director of Communications, the response to the mural over social media has been overwhelmingly positive.
Hyuro working on her mural. Photo by RJ Rushmore.
Unfortunately, the local newsseems to be over-hyping a friendly discussion amongst neighbors into a full-blown controversy and now Hyuro’s mural truly is at risk of being removed. Eeven though Hyuro had the permission from the owner of the wall to paint there, the city of Atlanta does still have some control over what goes there. The initial plans that were submitted to the city included a sketch by Hyuro, but upon showing up at the wall, the artist changed her mind aboutsample work by Hyuro, and upon showing up at the wall, she decided what to paint given the shape of the wall and how her animation could fit there perfectly, as well as provide an uplifting message for the neighborhood. As a result, the mural was not really approved by the city. On Wednesday, Living Walls resubmitted plans to the city based on the finished mural. The final decision is still pending.
Hyuro’s mural in progress. Photo by RJ Rushmore
If you want to voice your opinion on the mural, you can email Camille Russell Love, director of Atlanta’s Director Office Of Cultural Affairs. Her email is CRLove -at- atlantaga.gov. Living Walls (and I) would really appreciate your support of this beautiful artwork. As I understand it, many of the people upset with the mural have contacted Love and other city officials, and so it’s extremely important that those who are in favor of keeping the mural make their voices heard as well.
Lost & Found is HOTTEA‘s latest project. It took place in Minneapolis, where HOTTEA had found a disused tennis court without a net. With a bit (okay, a lot) of yarn, HOTTEA was able to at least temporarily make the court usable again for tennis. Here’s a timelapse video of the piece being made:
But the story doesn’t end there. HOTTEA’s work actually seems to have made a bit of an impact on at least two local residents. Here’s the story in HOTTEA’s words:
After the net was complete I rounded up some of the local youth to come try it out, tennis racquet’s and all. They loved it! Mission complete. 🙂 I ended up giving the tennis racquets to one of the locals that had a sincere interest to play tennis. I came back a few days later to check up on the net and I happened to run into him again. His name is Abnan. He told me this wonderful story about what had happened to him earlier that day….
He and a friend were playing tennis with the newly installed net and a gentelman stopped by and told Abnan if he and his friend came back later that day at 4:00 he would give them both new racquet’s to play with. Sure enough Abnan and his friend showed up and the man kept his word and gave them both brand new racquet’s and a few tennis balls. I couldn’t have been more excited after he had told me the story.
After hearing Mike Lydon speak about tactical urbanism at Living Walls last week, it’s great to see a street artist trying it out a bit and succeeding so fantastically with such a simple intervention. Street art that improves public space is pretty much the best kind of street art.
Earlier this week, I hosted a movie night at The Wren’s Nest in Atlanta for the Living Walls Conference. Living Walls asked me to put together a list of some short films to show, and I ended up with 27. A few people have asked me to post those films online to share with friends or just to see a film that they missed while they were getting some food, so after the jump you’ll find embedded versions of all 27 films that were screened at the movie night (many of which have appeared on Vandalog before). Enjoy! Continue reading “Vandalog Movie Night as a blog post”
Sometimes when I’m making these Wild Style Wednesday posts, I have a difficult time deciding whether I can include a piece because I can’t distinguish if it is “graffiti” or really just “street art”. For some reason, that matters. I ask myself questions like “Does the work have arrows?” “Is there reference to a 3-letter-name graffiti crew?” “Was this done with a legitimate risk of arrest?”
Instead of WSW this week, I’ve decided to compile some photos that didn’t make it into a previous WSW post, and assign them to more fitting ‘subcategories’ of graffiti/street art.
A mural of graffiti. By MataOne in Renaix. Photo by Startape Photographe.Ghetto product placement Satyr, Goser, 4Gets and Mr. Ef in East Bay. Photo by FunkandJazz.Pop-contemporary egoism Adek and MQ in San Francisco. Photo by FunkandJazzSlap-stick vandalism By Lush in Australia. Photo by Merciful Fate.Caricature of a “graffiti artist” painted illegally. By Graphis in Brazil.Noncommissioned neo-cubist mural BemsGF in France. Photo by GhettoFarceur.Graffiti disguised as street art. Ed Mun in Brazil.Art school vandalism Snek, Graphis and Terone. Photo by Graphis.Childstyle graffiti. Alissa in Brazil. Photo by Graphis.Unwarranted expressionism Bims and Rems. Photo by GhettoFarceur.
Let’s play a game.
VIEWERS DECIDE FIVE: Street art? Graffiti? Subcategory?
1.
Cranio in Brazil.
2.
L’Arabe-Stré in France. Photo by GhettoFarceur.
3.
Feustay, Sway and Kalouf in Niort. Photo by Startape Photographe.
Note from RJ: We at Vandalog are excited to publish Tristan Manco‘s first post on the site, hopefully the first of many. Tristan is one of contemporary street art’s greatest champions and most-distinguished writers. Tristan curated by iterations of Cans Festival, worked at Pictures on Walls for half a decade, has written or in some way contributed to 8 art books since 2002 as well as numerous magazine articles in publications such as Juxtapoz. I’ve known Tristan for a couple of years, and he is one of the people whom I really trust when it comes to art.
Taking place in the 24-hour daylight of a Northern Norway summer on a small island town called Vardø north of the Arctic Circle – Komafest was always going to be a unique event…
Vardø is the oldest settlement in Northern Norway and in recent years has become depopulated with many buildings left empty, partly as a result of the collapsing fishing industry. The curator and organizer of the festival, the Norwegian artist Pøbel saw the potential of a street art festival to make a visual transformation of the town and to show the local people it was possible to make changes. While developing the idea Pøbel spent time getting to know the locals and with his unassuming nature and enthusiasm he began to gain their trust. Soon the public began to get behind the idea and offer up buildings for artists to paint on and volunteering to help in the organization. It became a truly grassroots movement rather than something imposed on the community.
The island, shaped like a butterfly, has an otherworldly atmosphere and is only accessible overland by a winding 3km undersea tunnel, which appears out of the ground like something out of a science fiction movie, but the real stars of the show are its traditional wooden buildings. Many of the wooden jetties, warehouses and buildings are abandoned, weather-beaten and in a state of beautiful decay. Although standing empty these heritage buildings all have owners who are often unable to afford their proper restoration. The idea of project is that the art that is created on them can awaken these buildings out from a coma, giving the festival it’s name – Komafest.
What I found inspiring about this project was the way the invited artists responded to the place. Each artist had some idea of what they might experience but in most cases their preconceptions soon changed once they began to speak to the locals and learn more about their environment. According to local fisherman Aksel Robertsen, Philadelphian artist Steve Powers had many ideas planned but scrapped them as soon as he began to meet the people and experienced the place for himself – all those encounters shaped his final murals; such as “Cod is Great” and “Eternal Light – Eternal Night”. The French artist Remed painted a mural on an old seafront warehouse, which took some of its imagery from the seascape but included the text Hellige Heks Fortuna, (Hellige Heks means Holy Witch in Norwegian). This references to witches dates back to the Vardø witch trials that were held there in 17th century resulting in many of the accused being burned alive at the stake.
Last week, a small show by everyone’s favorite set of identical twin graffiti artists opened at the ICA Boston. The show is not the massive, playful and immersive installation you might expect from Os Gemeos, rather it is a much more traditional show in a white-walled room. I went to Boston hoping for an installation to rival their museumshows in Brazil or at least comparable to their 2008 show at Deitch Projects. But, in its own way, a white-walled show makes sense.
Curator Pedro Alonzo described the show as an attempt to show that Os Gemeos’ work could hold up in a traditional museum setting with just a few paintings being hung on walls and plenty of space between each picture. Another person suggested to me that hanging a white-walled show is a way to prove that Os Gemeos’ work will continue to be interesting long after the twins are dead and no longer make new installations. I think they are right, but I just wished that Os Gemeos picked another time to prove themselves, perhaps a time when I wasn’t taking six hours of buses to see their show.
So I went into the show with expectations that could never be met, but I did find something else there. Alonzo’s bet has been proven right: As hundreds or perhaps thousands of collectors around the world already knew, now the world too knows that an Os Gemeos painting may look great when put into one of their installations, but it can be absolutely brilliant just hung on a wall by itself too.
The piece originally made for Viva la Revolución: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape. Photo by Lois Stavsky
The two weakest pieces in the show are actually both pieces that are just the sort that might shine as components in an installation. One was made for Viva la Revolución: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape, a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego also curated by Pedro Alonzo. The story that Alonzo told about the piece turned out to be a lot more interesting than the work itself. The twins were in San Diego prepping for the show when they saw a bunch of tablesaws and similar tools that aren’t as widely available in Brazil, and they were inspired to use material that would have otherwise been discarded (including bits leftover from Swoon’s installation) to make something. Only problem is, the result of their recycling just doesn’t look like much alone on a white wall and without the story.
Upside Down Sunrise. Photo courtesy of the ICA Boston.
Thankfully, most of the paintings work well in a traditional gallery, and a few are absolutely brilliant. In particular, I practically couldn’t look away from Upside Down Sunrise and an untitled painting of vandals on the New York subway tracks (which happens to be owned by Lance Armstrong). For any graffiti nerds out there, it is probably worth seeing the show just to see how many names you can recognized painted into the subway piece.
Photo by Lois Stavsky
Of course, there’s also the sound installation, a corner of the gallery filled with brown and yellow faces shouting and singing, if the right buttons are pressed on the accompanying piano. I just hope there’s someone there during the show’s run to play it, since I doubt that visitors will be allowed to.
And for those of us who wanted a little more, the twins did not disappoint outside. They painted two murals (and a van) in Boston.
The smaller of the two murals is on the Revere Hotel, and features two writers tagging the wall. It’s a great little piece to be surprised by. I think I overheard one man trying to contact the police about just what the hell was going on, but most of the people whom I saw come across the mural were loving it.
Both in scale and awesomeness, the piece on the Revere is nothing compared to The Giant of Boston, Os Gemeos’ largest mural in the United States by painted surface area, but it’s been causing a bit of controversy. The Giant of Boston is located at Dewey Square, and you really can’t miss it. But just what it is has proven to be not very evident to people who are not already familiar with Os Gemeos. The masked is most likely a protestor or a vandal, as the twins have painted in the past, but at least hundreds of Boston residents have looked at The Giant and seen a “terrorist” or a “towel head.” A photo of the mural was posted on the Facebook page of a local Fox station, and literally hundreds of people have posted similar ignorant/racist responses. Bostinno has more on this controversy.
Photo by Lois Stavsky
I do not think that this show is what most Os Gemeos fans were hoping for, and it certainly wasn’t what I was hoping for, but damn it I couldn’t stop smiling the entire time I was in the gallery or looking at either of their murals. There’s some good work, and Alonzo isn’t wrong to want to show that the work can hold its own in a white-walled space or brighten up the streets of Boston. Now, I’m just hoping that both murals stay up for the full 18-months that they could potentially be around for. Os Gemeos’ show is open at the ICA Boston through November 25th.
The 2012 Living Walls Conference is about to begin, and the line-up of events and murals has finally been announced. Once again, I’ll be participating at the conference. I’ll be speaking at a panel on the issue of gender, hosting an evening of short films and maybe doing a Pecha Kucha talk if I come up with something to talk about.
But of course, the highlight of Living Walls is going to be the murals. For this year’s conference, the festival organizers have decided to go with an (almost) all-women lineup of muralists including Fefe, Hyuro, Miso, Cake and Olive47, plus photographers Martha Cooper and Teen Witch.
Other speakers at the conference include Living Walls alums LNY and Gaia, as well as Ian Wilson, who recently organized the Wall\Therapy mural festival in Rochester, NY.
Living Walls will take place August 15th-19th, with special events every day. For the full lineup a comprehensive listing of events, check the Living Walls facebook event.
So here’s the deal. Complex asked Vandalog founder-leader RJ Rushmore to create a list for them, “50 Greatest Street Artists Right Now,” and that list came out this month. When I saw it I was surprised. Out of 50 names, the only women to make the cut were Faith47 and Swoon (and a few who make art with male partners).
Yes, I know that any person who makes up a list like that would come up with a different list. But the intro to the list read, “Public art has a whole new set of powerful voices. We’re celebrating those.” And 48 of the 50 entries on a list designed to celebrate powerful new voices were men’s voices. That’s not a lot of diversity. It’s not even a little diversity. I called out RJ for his selections, via Twitter.
We volleyed some names back and forth but ultimately my argument was not with his exclusion of any particular artist. In exchanges with RJ and others, the questions came up–as they tend to when women are breaking into boys’ clubs (politics, business, race-car driving, etc.): Should there be a separate list for women? (No.) Should there be a quota for women even if they’re “not as talented” as men? (No, but, false question.)
If I were RJ and knew the work of as many street artists as he does, I would start with my favorites, and probably run out of room just listing those artists. So I wouldn’t have to go looking under rocks to find artists I had never heard of before. If I were RJ, I might think that if there were any women (or men) doing truly great work, I would have heard about them by now. Except that’s not necessarily true, especially with women. For instance, RJ mentioned a few female artists he considered…but he didn’t put them on the list.
Consider that the most powerful and the most personal work is not necessarily going to resonate as strongly once it crosses gender lines, which is not a minor point. For instance, RJ said he’s not a fan of Olek. And I’m not a fan of Lush. And that’s how it works: women don’t end up on too many “greatest” lists, if the guys are the gatekeepers. And if they’re not on the lists, how does anyone hear about them? It’s a little like the axiom about getting a job: you can’t get hired till you have experience, but if you can’t get hired, where do you get experience?
After our exchange, RJ offered me an opportunity to write a post for Vandalog about women street artists, and I respect him for that. So here it is, there are five artists in particular who I think fit the Complex criteria but didn’t make the list. As I began researching the post, I asked around for referrals. Emails arrived all week with the names of talented women making great art all over the world. So as a deputized one-time Vandalog gatekeeper, I want people to know about established as well as emerging talents like Alice Mizrachi, Bastardilla, Bunny M, Cake, Elle, Fafi, Georgina Ciotti, Gilf!, Hyuro, Imminent Disaster, Lady Pink, Liliwenn, LMNOP, MISO, Miss Van, Sheryo, Shin Shin, Sofia Maldonado, Tati Suarez, Toofly, and Wing. Just to name a few. Because there are so many more.
The work they are making reflects their communities, it beautifies blighted areas, it makes us laugh, it breaks down gender barriers and smashes stereotypes and speaks out on behalf of women and children and parents and humanity. It is sensual and funny and simple and complex and symbolic and speaks of rights and wrongs and freedom. And these women have these strong, powerful, fierce, witty voices that we all need to hear. Why? Because they make images to express what we as viewers can’t articulate until we see their work. And then as it pierces our hearts and minds we say, simply: yes, that is exactly how I feel, too. But this is not because they are women. It is because they are artists.
