Nearly five and a half kilometres of graffiti murals on the concrete walls lining Avenida 23 de Maio converted this major São Paulo thoroughfare into a visual landmark, adding to the city’s reputation as a global hotspot for urban art. That is, until early 2017. On 14 January, Avenida 23 de Maio’s colourful walls disappeared behind a layer of grey paint

Morrison, Chandra

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20/04/2017Graffiti vs the ‘Beautiful City’: Urban Policy and ArtisticResistance in São Pauloblogs.lse.ac.uk /latamcaribbean/2017/04/20/graffiti-vs-the-beautiful-city-urban-policy-and-artistic-resistance-in-sao-paulo/Repeated episodes of graffiti removal, resistance, and responses in São Paulo reveal a subtleshift in the power dynamic between urban artists, the public, and the state, writes ChandraMorrison.Nearly five and a half kilometres of graffiti murals on the concrete walls lining Avenida 23 deMaio converted this major São Paulo thoroughfare into a visual landmark, adding to the city’sreputation as a global hotspot for urban art.That is, until early 2017. On 14 January, Avenida 23 de Maio’s colourful walls disappeared behind a layer of greypaint.A mural on Avenida 23 de Maio repainted after being erased by state contractors ( Marcos Paulo Dias/Milton Jung , CC BY-NC 2.0)The corridor’s redecoration was one of the first actions of new mayor João Doria’s flagship urban policy CidadeLinda, which aims to turn São Paulo into a “Beautiful City”. Cidade Linda proposes to revitalise rundown areas ofthis sprawling Brazilian metropolis and create an aesthetically and experientially pleasing city environment bycleaning roadsides, trimming trees, and other janitorial efforts. With Cidade Linda’s strong emphasis ontransformation of the visual sphere, removal of pixação tagging and other illicit inscriptions on urban surfaces isamongst the mayor’s priorities.While Doria’s broader beautification plan has received largely positive reviews, erasure of the 23 de Maio muralsproved deeply controversial, provoking an immediate backlash of public criticism and artistic resistance thatfeatured widely in local media.In part, this controversy reflects a uniquely Brazilian context in which two urban painting subcultures – graffitiand pixação – coexist side-by-side, each marking the cityscape in distinct ways. Whereas graffiti art featurescolourful large-format words and imagery produced predominantly at ground level, pixação typically comprisesangular black lettering written at staggering heights and in even more staggering quantities across the vertical1/4Pixação in São Paulo ( Rosa Menkmen, CC BY-NC 2.0)surfaces of São Paulo’s high-rises.More notable than these stylistic and spatial differentiations, however, are dramatic differences in public andlegal attitudes, which have become entrenched over the past decade.International acclaim for Brazilian street art and thesuccess of big names like Os Gemeos and Nunca onthe international art market have helped to generatewidespread support for graffiti artists, yet the publichas an overwhelmingly negative impression of theirpixação counterparts. This difference in perceptionemerges clearly in a recent survey reported in Folhade São Paulo which revealed that, while 85% of SãoPaulo’s residents are in favour of the city’s graffiti art,97% dislike pixação.Even more impressively, this perceptual divisionbecame enshrined in Brazilian federal legislationwhen in 2011 an amendment was passed todecriminalise acts of graffiti , deeming them an artisticcontribution to the urban landscape and categoricallydifferent to pixação vandalism. Still, graffiti’snewfound legality is contingent on assessments ofartistic merit and authorised status, ultimatelyresulting in a blurry and highly subjective boundary tomaintain in practice.Doria’s vision for São Paulo mirrors popularconceptions of graffiti as art and pixação as crime.With pixadores squarely designated as enemies ofthe city, the mayor promptly passed a new law whichincreases fines for those caught in the act toR$5,000, or twice as much for repeat offenders.At the same time, attuned to the global penchant forwell-curated urban art, Doria plans to establishdesignated graffiti zones, called grafitódromos,drawing inspiration from the success of the Wynwoodart district in Miami. And – despite offering nopractical indications of how this would be verified – he has suggested that graffiti produced under authorisedconditions will be welcomed in São Paulo.The irony is, of course, that the 23 de Maio murals were authorised paintings. Building on a long tradition ofartistic intervention on the Avenue walls that extends back at least to the late 1980s, the most recent murals wereproduced in December 2014 and January 2015 during a large event called “Graffiti na 23 de Maio”  which wasorganised by local graffiti artists with support of the São Paulo Municipal Secretary of Culture under the priorHaddad administration.Publicly, the new government justified the removal by claiming the murals had been deteriorated and tainted bypixação. Yet this move simply makes officials’ dismissal of possibilities to refurbish the paintings, or even torecognise the extensive history and organic development of urban art practices in locations like Avenida 23 deMaio, all the more conspicuous.Graffiti artists responded to the high profile erasure with swift and diverse acts of artistic resistance.Replicating the distinctive cursive handwriting of his tag found throughout the cityscape, Iaco intervened on2/4Avenida 23 de Maio by writing the mayor’s name twelve times in linear progression across the newly paintedwall. Simple yet conceptually rich, by swapping his name for that of “Doria” Iaco’s intervention forces the mayorto erase his own identity upon restoring the grey paint to pristine condition.“Censored Wall” and “Doria” inscribed on the newly grey Avenida 23 de Maio (photo courtesy of Iaco Viana; © Iaco Viana)Elsewhere in the city, artivists Mundano and Mauro Neri took to the streets to engage in dissident cleaning.Using a sponge and soapy water, they scrubbed away layers of whitewash to expose the artworks that layhidden underneath. In a video documenting this activity in the Largo da Batata, Mundano announced hisparticipation in Doria’s call for the public to help create a beautiful city, by allowing the colours of his paintings tore-emerge and brighten the cityscape. Meanwhile, Mauro’s efforts to reveal his artistic message – based aroundthe concept veracidade, to see the city with new eyes – resulted in his detainment by the police at the end ofJanuary. He was later released, but not before drawing significant media attention to the incident.Others took their creative production into the depths of São Paulo’s periphery. Both Does and Zezão postedphotos on Instagram of their paintings in Vila Flávia, a community located in São Mateus in the city’s EasternZone that is chronically neglected by city officials but benefits from active grassroots cultural initiatives led by theGrupo Opni graffiti collective. Captions and comments implied that their artwork would last longer in theperiphery not only due to local residents’ warm receptiveness to graffiti culture and its artists’ drive to improve thesensorial experience of marginalised spaces, but also because they doubt Doria’s concern for cleanliness andattractive urban conditions will extend to the city’s extremities.All of these actions challenge the very notion of beauty at the core of Doria’s programme. They question bothwho defines and who benefits from such urban beautification. And they ask how this vision for a beautiful city willaddress the deep socio-spatial inequalities and ecological pressures that saturate the São Paulo cityscape, in away that effects change beyond mere surface treatment.This artistic critique of the financial priorities and values of the state is not new. It is a sentiment that I cameacross repeatedly during fieldwork in 2008 and 2009 at the height of a previous graffiti conflict, which had beenprovoked by the Kassab administration’s attempts to reduce São Paulo’s visual pollution via the Lei CidadeLimpa (Clean City Law, 2006). As I’ve explored elsewhere, this policy too provoked a contentious relationshipwith the city’s graffiti artists, who began to challenge the government – to cite Mundano’s artwork – to “erasepoverty” or “wipe out political corruption” rather than “the art of the people.”Certainly Doria’s clean-up initiative is not the first controversial graffiti removal to hit São Paulo in recent years.The current dispute speaks to debates that have surfaced time and again over the past decade about the place3/4of graffiti art – and of pixação – in the urban landscape.Nor is it the first time that murals along Avenida 23 de Maio have been at the centre of such aestheticaltercations. However, official reactions to these past conflicts prove intriguing. In 2008 public outcry at theprefeitura’s erasure of a large panel painted by Os Gemeos and friends resulted in an invitation for the artists torepaint the wall, a process documented in the film Cidade Cinza. And again in 2014, when workers hired by theHaddad government covered over a painting by Nunca, originally commissioned by SESC in 2005, thecontracted company not only issued a public apology for their mistake, they also bankrolled production of areplacement mural.What these multiple episodes of graffiti removal, resistance, and responses collectively reveal is a subtle shift inthe power dynamic between urban artists, the public, and the state relating to the ability of citizens to define theurban image – not merely in aesthetic terms, but in imagining the very idea of the city itself.Notes:• The views expressed here are of the authors and do not reflect the position of the Centre or of the LSE• Please read our Comments Policy before commentingChandra Morrison – LSE Latin America and Caribbean CentreDr Chandra Morrison is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in LSE’s Latin America andCaribbean Centre, working on the project “New Muralism and the Politics of Erasure: A Study ofPublic Culture in Peru.” Her research examines graffiti art and its relation to transformations ofpublic life and urban space in the South American cities of São Paulo, Santiago de Chile, andLima.4/4

Graffiti vs the ‘Beautiful City’: Urban policy and artistic resistance in São Paulo

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