The first thing I noticed during the cab ride into Sao Paulo from the airport yesterday was the graffiti. Not only was it everywhere I looked, adorning the facades of public housing and warehouses and corporate offices, but it was like nothing I had seen before. I'm no scholar of graffiti, but the spindly, angled lettering of consistent height and width, seemed something of another world.
Lucky for me, I spent most of the rest of the day surrounded by urban artists--hip hop and break dancers, Djs, and taggers who had come out to the art space where I'm based for a day of free music and art making--who were all too pleased to tell me about pixacao (pee-sha-sao), Sao Paulo's signature graffiti script. Pixadores are their own breed of taggers and mostly work within a large crew to tag whole building fronts. The taller the building facades, the taller the building, more prestigious the tag. The form of the script was influenced by heavy metal album coversof the 80s (though someone told me its roots extended prior to the the 60s and 70s).
I found a good video clip explaining pixacao in English on
Youtube. You can see some of the fate-tempting acrobatics these pixadores go through to make their mark. It stands in stark contrast to some of the more "traditional" graffiti art I saw on walls and building sides, which is making its way into the mainstream art market. I hope to post some pictures of this as I spot it in the city.
