Issue #55

Flowers of Street Art

EDITO #55 | April – May 2021

We are still longing today for the reopening of cultural places, festivals, and more generally, the return of our freedom of movement… But street artists have not lost their freedom of expression nor action. Let’s call for a spring of Street Art!

Let spring be the occasion to go back to the origins of graffiti and Street Art, the invention of spray paint, the spark that democratised creation and allowed artists to leave their studios to conquer cities, factories and… our hearts.

Even the ancient city of Rome has succumbed to the benevolent onslaught of street artists. Many districts are now filled with murals, standing alongside the masterpieces of antiquity and the Renaissance. Rome and the Renaissance have always been a source of inspiration to street artists, something which PBOY and his Underground Sistine Chapel on the outskirts of Paris reminds us of.

But Street Art is not limited to mastery of the can of spray paint, collage, stencil or paintbrush, or to outdoor walls. With the green Street Art movement, we propose to explore alternative forms of expression (reverse graffiti, revegetation, etc.), urban art in nature and how it raises our environmental awareness.

Street Art is ubiquitous, too. To our greatest joy, it keeps gaining ground as you will see through the interventions at the Chappe museum school, where urban art is brought to schoolchildren, as well as through the Milmurs festival in Martinique.

Street Art conveys messages of hope and emotions about the world around us, about the flaws of our societies and our environment. This issue will bring you the poetic works of Pejac, who “starts with small things to ask big questions”; the figurative portraits of Hopare, who beautifies the delicate faces of his female models; the florid abstractions of Toxic, a pioneer, passionate, and historian of graffiti; the stencils of BYC, who observes and captures the evils and drifts of our society; the playful and colourful bricks growing in the cracks of our city walls of Jan Vormann; and finally, the bestiary of the Nevercrew duo, which awakens our environmental consciousness…

May spring bring Street Art!