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There are many protest messages left on Athens walls, and also elaborated and colorful paintings, seen by those who take a closer look, signed by new names of the Greek urban art. Following them leads to two trails: the steep Exarchia streets and the dark alleyways of Gazi and Metaxourgio, districts that are occupied by the effervescence of students and artists, in which there’s no police surveillance, and where they took possession of the walls to express how they feel.
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The graffiti culture is predominant in Gazi and Metaxourgio, in the stretch that connects the Keramikos subway to the Athens School of Fine Arts. There, Opera Mundi set a meeting with the architect and urban artist b. (as he is known on the streets), 30 years old, who gently guided our eyes through the area’s avenues and alleyways.
b. owns a studio with two other friends, has exposed on the Venice Biennale and its represented by the Opera gallery, in New York. He paints since he was a teenager, when he started drawing on the train wagons — the green line, suburban, is all colored in graffiti — and he never stopped. In a two hour ride, his characters appear frequently, usually drawn with yellow skin and cheerful geometric lines.
While we walk, b. explains the different styles we’re seeing and comments the urban planning of the city, he says that every corner has its own personality. Personality, by the way, is not something either Athens or its artist’s lack. The graffiti surpasses walls and reaches stairs, monuments, any iron door or garage. They have different points of view and different colors. Athens’ urban scene is creative.
“If you want to see more elaborated work, you must come to Gazi, where there is the biggest concentration of artists that mix techniques and risk innovations. It’s also here that artists that come from other countries usually do their pieces”, says b.
Gazi is known today for its modern bars and cafés. In fact, there we can find sophisticated paintings and strong names that take turns in murals — it only takes a look above to bump into the Brazilian osgemeos, Nunca and Nina Pandolfo.
The Greek artists are represented by the works of KRAH, Spit e Sonk. No to mention BLAQ who, in an interesting way, builds lines with letters and fills even house gates only with calligraphy.
Heading downtown, the streets narrow up and the drawings change. Starting on Metaxourgio – where there’s a sort of “cracolândia” (“city of crack”, an area in Sao Paulo known for its history of intense drug trafficking and prostitution) that makes the social Greek crisis explicit – the messages become less illustrated and subjective. There, it’s the dissatisfaction with the country’s situation is evident, as well as the solidarity towards immigrants, that is seeing at time in poetries or in direct messages to the fascist uprising in the country.
Anarchic walls
Walking through Athens also means feeling the tension that comes from the walls. The campus of the National Technical University of Athens, in Exarchia, is the birthplace of anarchy and the stage of happenings that changed the course of the country on the 20th century.
At the university — where the police was forbidden to enter in the middle 1970’s, when a student protest against the military government ended with a tank on the gates and several students shot —, the spray is everywhere screaming against the authorities.
Exarchia, the neighboring district, is also vibrant and bohemian, shared by distinct tribes. There, the number of writings on the walls by square meter is astonishing, goes from the gutter to the terrace and crosses every frontage without taking a breath.
In December 2008, a 15-year-old anarchic student was shot to dead by the police. Alexis Grigoropoulous is to this day a synonym of revolt. In the corner where the episode took place, there’s a memorial on the wall, next to several sentences that bare no forgiveness. “From that day on, the writings increased a lot on the neighborhood and now we can say that the largest number of messages against the system is in Exarchia”, told b.
Marble pillars, sculptures monuments, and everywhere in the city is covered with this kind of expression. It’s curious to see that, even though it’s an ephemeral art, the old messages don´t disappear, but run over each other confusing the passers-by.
Stylized gas masks are painted on several streets. And they’re not less real than the ones that are seen on protest days. Athens’ art, political or not, in Gazi or Exarchia, pulses hundreds of beats per minute.
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