Street murals spark debate on public art in Brazil
SAO PAULO — When completed in 2015, the mayor’s office hailed the graffiti panels along Avenida 23 de Maio as Latin America’s largest open-air mural — 70 works of street art stretching for more than 3 miles along a boulevard connecting a well-to-do district with the city center.
The mayor even donned a pair of orange coveralls and wielded a spray gun to put a thin layer of gray paint over the murals — angering people who considered the paintings part of the city’s cultural heritage and sparking a debate about what is art and what should be protected.
Removal of the murals was among the first acts of Doria’s “Pretty City” campaign: a traveling circus of street cleaners and maintenance workers who install new trash cans, plant trees, pick up garbage and cover up graffiti around Sao Paulo every weekend.
Doria’s administration has increased fines for pichacao, is installing cameras to catch practitioners, and encourages everyone, especially taxi drivers, to report it.
Doria has now promised a “museum of street art” to showcase authorized, privately funded murals by artists chosen by an independent committee.