C, F Pixa Bixa

Thoughts about ativism and queer street art in Lisboa

Abstract

Lisbon can be a metaphor of a city as an open-air museum full of monuments, busts, statues, and has a function to tribute to an important person for the history. All squares and touristic places are teeming of these objects and is common the public art to everyone. Graffiti, stencils, stickers, “paste up’s” are using in every place in urban space and this is totally included in mainstream, but neither everything is considered something legal, as treat by Campos (2016, 2017). It’s an important question that is the legality of the expressions from the occupation and insertion of art in public spaces. The street artist can be a criminalized for your activities by the laws in almost countries and your art always judge as a transgression act. But the same artist could be invited to make a mural on a “site specific”, Kwon (2011), and then be punished for an autonomous intervention in other local. This text is wondering to bring a reflection about the potential of discourse mediation that could has be the street art with your presence on the structure of the cities. To thing about this discourse this text will use the Pixa Bixa artistic project works initiated in 2018. This group formed by two artists from Brazil and resident in Lisbon uses his drawings to represent the queer personalities who inspire them. Your action isn’t authorized and is part of conviction that the urban art is a work almost entirely done by straight guys therefore the main idea of this project is provoking this social establishment inserting a disruptive art at the daily life. The queer bodies and your existences can be a shame to the orthodox person and the reacts could be the way to show how the societies treats these people. Violence is a physically, sentimental, moral or psychic action. Comparing those artistic project and others it’s possible to understand differences of receptions when we see the way with which citizens remove from the walls his illustrations. This artistic project using naked bodies to confront the male chauvinist society mainly these structures is modeling in a masculine viewing. It’s a “celebrating of difference” like they use in his Instagram profile and demystify it’s a way to emphasize other bodies and empowering this community. Art installation, Bishop (2009), could be a powerful form to spread the queer mediation because is scarce these kind of expression in Lisbon. This analyzes will be very important in this text and the focus is how these works can disturb the population and how they could make the reification about over the LGBT universe. Thus, through this case analyzes using they registers it could be possible to understand how the street art has spots to be expressed on the architecture and everything stays between the old and contemporary, and same expressions has be erased by de people.