Street Art: a mitical world in osgemeos graffiti

• Grant number: 10/19752-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: March 01, 2011
• End date: September 30, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Plastic Arts
• Principal Investigator: Lisbeth Ruth Rebollo Goncalves
• Grantee: Gláucia Costa de Castro Pimentel
• Host Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The objective of this project is to study the works of the Pandolfo Brothers, São Paulo graffitists who have been gaining media and public approval, as evidenced by the quantity of visitors attending their most recent expositions, pointing to a modification in the acceptance of graffiti and street arts as a whole. Yet, even with this, popular perception, in general, tends to regard these urban expressions as "filth, degradation, and self-promotion". Much controversy surrounds this and other languages know as Street Arts, in good part due to the lack of knowledge regarding their origins, focus, reach, and distinction. For more than twenty years occupying spaces in major cities, São Paulo's graffiti has been gaining international prominence, without the population being aware of it. With high rejection from various social segments, it continues altering itself from its New York basis, disconnecting itself from the original hip-hop movement and gaining plastic references associated to migration waves common to São Paulo, as it constructs a single language which aggregates to its own 70s pop vibe references those of Northeastern wealth, comic books, and proletarian quotes, but, which above all else, comment on the city and on the rest of the word, on its maladies, tragedies, and discriminations, proposing solutions which are sometimes utopian, sometimes mythic, sometimes violent, and sometimes tribal. However, these city chroniclers stand as ghostly images without a profound study, one which I now intend on accomplishing.