Mother Nature's Show

Evolving de facto in an urban environment they try to reenchant, street artists can grow acutely conscious of the harshness, atony, and artificiality of cityscape. Those we are presenting in this show have developed a sensibility, if not a concern, for the beauty of nature and the necessity of protecting the environment.
In all the artworks, natural elements respond to industrial elements, reasserting the interdependency between humans and their natural habitat. Whether it be DZIA’s murals, NEVERCREW’s paintings or KURAR’s wild horses stencil, the man-made concrete jungles and industrial landscapes we create and abandoned are criticized. All hope is not lost though, for animals and imagination are always prepared to take over and thrive.
However, the artists do not lapse into simplicity. Rather than opposing blatantly urban and nature, they envision the two spheres to be closely intertwined. This viewpoint is clear in the images depicted and in the practices of the artists. For instance, ETNIK and NEVERCREW work on wood, creating a world where fauna and flora embrace machines and abstract cityscapes. This interweaving of nature and urban is taken a step further in SHOE’s graffoliage, where nature is woven in the very fabric of the paper for his urban art.
The environmental crisis and this dialectic between urban and nature has become a source of inspiration and a cause to defend for these artists, such as SHEPARD FAIREY. Similarly, the fragility of DZIA and NEVERCREW’s animals remind us the role we are bound to play in protecting the environment, while ETNIK presents the mightiness of nature capable of imploding cities, humbling our pride and vanity. The artists presented question urban, nature and the place of humans in the world, creating a platform and a medium for poetic and environmental justice.