Sao Paulo, Brazil + Graffiti = Pixacao!

Article Review: Choque Photos, Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine. Issue #102, July 2009.

"Pixacao" is a form of graffiti that began in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It was developed 30 years ago separate from other graffiti movements, the "pixadores" simply did not have outside references. Pixacao consists of sophisticated calligraphic letter forms that only other pixadores can understand. Some pixacao letters have evolved to the point of becoming completely illegible. Pixacao attacks the vertical space within the city. Sao Paulo is a city of 20 million people, so vertical space is abundant. Pixacao covers the city space from top to bottom. Pixacao has been compared to the graffiti movement NY in the 1970s, but while New York graffiti writers mainly bombed the subway stations and trains, pixacao covers every abandoned space of the city. There are abandoned spaces where you can find pixacao that is 20 years old! The photos taken by Choque Photos show whole highrises covered in pixacao.

So, why do people create pixacao? They do it for social recognition, entertainment, the adrenalin rush and protest. Pixadores have created their own language that only they can understand. It is a closed community that is difficult to join. The guys involved in the scene often do not have good relationships with their own families, so the pixo groups become the family that the pixadores strive to gain recognition from. The pixadores are outsiders within Sao Paulo. Their unique visual langauge makes them visible to others in the city.The pixadores are not speaking to Sao Paulo, they are speaking to each other, but their angst is clear. They are making visible that which no one wants to see. The circumstances (drugs, poverty, boredom) that lead guys to pixacao are made visible by the aggressive letterforms found all over the city, there is not one street that does not have pixacao on it. Like NY in the 1970s, Sao Paulo has been bombed! The pixadores have successfully changed the visual environment of their city. It is estimated that there are at least five thousand active pixadores in Sao Paulo. Pixacao is also very dangerous, guys fall of off roofs to their deaths on a monthly basis. So these pixadores are risking their lives to make themselves heard! They protest against the clean, safe white lives enjoyed by the bourgeoisie. In Sao Paulo there is a large gap between the wealthy and impoverished. The wealthy spends large amounts of money to live in clean safe buildings, but pixadores sometime enter these buildings and appropriate the space as their own with spray paint. Pixadores don't steal from these buildings, but they create an environment that questions the idea of beauty and safety for the wealthy. The wealthy cannot hide from the truth of Sao Paulo, the pixadores throw it right in their faces...

The pixacao of Sao Paulo is graffiti in its finest form. It changes the visual environment in a city of 20 million people, and it makes people question the world in which they live. Pixacao is an aggressive form of graffiti with writers risking death to make their mark on the city...a mark that is complex, sophisticated and admired by other artists. Pixacao in Sao Paulo is something to pay attention to as it evolves and is copied in other cities and countries...Think something similar to pixacao will ever make it to Edmonton?