Graffiti art is controversial. Attitudes vary as to the appropriateness of defacing/decorating (based on your point of view) public spaces. Personally I’m a huge supporter. If our public spaces (and lines of sight) are to be auctioned off to the highest bidders – inevitably the fat, sweaty inbred cheerleaders of consumerism like Starbucks and McDonalds – we need subversive graffiti art to provide a counter-argument.
Anyhoo, enough of my ranting. Check the clip below – it presents an interesting angle to the argument. Alexandre Orion, a São Paulo-based artist, spent a couple of weeks selectively scrubbing soot from a city commuter tunnel to reveal bunches of skulls, a comment on the tragedy of pollution. The result? The cops couldn’t do anything about it – he was just ‘cleaning’ the tunnels, albeit selectively. The city administrators had to waterblast the entire tunnel – and all of the others in the city…
Alexandre’s message: "The skulls belong to all of us. I wanted to bring a catacomb from the near future to the present, to show people that the tragedy of pollution is happening right now. I try to remind people of things they are trying to forget."
Reverse Graffiti: Ossario : Alexandre Orion via Wired, powered by YouTube
Nice find – cool guy. Next banksy?