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I was a teenager when I started painting. I had a lot of troubles with the police.
Sometimes people come to me and say that my "pixacao" looks nice. But it is not for bad.
They don't know the meaning of the word.
A lot of artists get mad with that. I don't care, I think that the two arts are just the
same.
You use spray can in both. We know that here in Brazil is one of the places that you can
separate it. You can divide graffiti from "pixacao", outside
the country graffiti came first.
In Brazil because of the dictatorship, people had to express themselves by writing their
messages on the walls.
That's why "pixacao" came first. When I got the can, I already knew I was going
to draw. I was painting the marquees...Climbing some
buildings to make my drawings...
At that time, graffiti started in São Gonçalo. The history of graffiti in Rio starts in São
Gonçalo. There were just me ,EMA and Akuma painting
in Rio. We started the art here. We made it grow in Rio.
There were a lot of parties. One of the most famous hip-hop party was "Zueira" from Elza
Cohen. People had their first contact with hip-hop in this party. I know that a lot of
artists and rappers came from the ghetto but they all met them selves there.
Me and Emma, we had a bunch of paintings there. Binho from Sao Paulo had it too.
Then graffiti started to get known by the other parts of the city.
There was a train In the back of our atelier in Sao Goncalo and we painted the entire train,
and artists from Rio, Sao Paulo and other countries came to have some contact with us.
Then I moved myself to "Tijuca" and I started paint here. My goal was to paint all my neighborhood,
it is the place I live, I want to paint it the most.
The society started to understand graff as the artist's way of escape.
I mean, Rio de Janeiro has a lot of beautiful places, beaches and everything...But it is
still a very destroyed city. There are some ugly places too.
Of course that not even everybody likes graffiti, and sometimes it can be not a good thing to
see.
But this is the way that the artist has to show his reality, what he lives, or what he
likes.
Maybe it will not be a protest paiting, it can be something abstract, something that
is beautiful for him.
I really like Rio de Janeiro's style.In Rio you can see a lot of different styles. Different
shapes... The chin of my characters is what connect
all of them. I like to work with graphic repetitions and also I like to draw my characters getting
out off the wall with dimension. I always wanted to make my character get out the wall
and now it happens! I am always pushing it to get out.
Everybody asks me the name of my character. But actually it looks the same but they are
different, I use different aesthetics.
I will make a voting for finding it a name. A lot of people call it of crazy names, but
still there are not one I like.At the right time I will find a name for it.
France was the best place I went to paint. Me and Acme, we participate of the Art Paris,
one of the biggest art fairs in the world.
The gallery that supports me had Picasso's paintings, Andy Wahrol's, Basquiat's paintings
beside of it, and I am a fan of this artists. Last year I went to Africa. It was amazing!
You get France and Africa, so different realities.
I could the war tanks, houses...A lot of war marks. And also a huge poverty.
When I got there I had the opportunity of painting for kids that never saw graff before.
They never saw a spray can before. I had like 50 or 60 kids in the lunch break, beside me,
watching me while I was painting. That was incredible. I will never forget it!
The artist for me is the one that is painting in
the streets...Is the one that is everywhere,Is the one that loves it.
You can have your job or you can paint as a hobby, but graffiti is a street art. It
is not for inside places.