Culture

Visual art and street art

Visual art in Brazilian favelas spans graffiti and mural traditions developed locally over decades, international collaborations including the Favela Painting project, and a range of community-rooted collectives working across photography, painting, and design.

Local graffiti traditions

Brazilian graffiti and street art has long-established traditions in São Paulo and Rio, with São Paulo particularly recognized for the pixação (a high-contrast, calligraphic tagging style developed in the city from the 1980s) and for muralism produced by artists including Eduardo Kobra, Os Gêmeos (the twins Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo), and Nina Pandolfo. While not all São Paulo street art is favela-rooted, much of it has been produced by artists with periphery origins and engages favela imagery and themes.

In Rio, the muralist tradition is rooted in both favela community organizing and street art produced for and in favelas. Artists including Acme, Toz, and Marcio SWK have worked on large-scale projects.

The Favela Painting project

The Dutch artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn — working together as Haas&Hahn — initiated the Favela Painting project in Vila Cruzeiro (part of the Complexo da Penha) in 2006, painting a large mural on a community staircase. The project expanded with a 2010 large-scale painting of facades in Santa Marta, in collaboration with residents and the residents' association. The work has been documented internationally and has been the subject of mixed reception in Brazilian art criticism: some have praised it as a model of collaborative aesthetic intervention, while others have raised questions about whether it imposes outside aesthetic priorities and whether it functions as image management for the broader UPP-era urban-renewal policies.

Photography

Photographic engagement with favelas has produced one of the most extensive bodies of work on Brazilian urban life. The Imagens do Povo project, founded in 2004 by the Observatório de Favelas, has trained generations of favela-rooted photographers and built an archive of community-produced images. Other significant photographers working in or from favelas include Bira Carvalho, Naldinho Lourenço, and the late Ratão Diniz. The Maré-based collective Olhares do Morro has produced sustained photographic work since the 2000s.

Visual-art collectives

Community-rooted visual-art collectives in favelas operate at the boundary between fine art, community organizing, and cultural production. The Casa Amarela in Morro da Providência, founded in 2009 by the photographer JR during his Women Are Heroes project, became a recurring institution. The Galeria Nacional in Heliópolis and the Galpão Bela Maré in Maré are examples of dedicated community art spaces.

Major recent projects

The French artist JR's Women Are Heroes project, executed in 2008 in Morro da Providência and elsewhere, placed large photographic portraits of women residents on building facades; the project drew international attention and produced a substantial published archive. The 2014 Brazilian artist Mundano's Pimp My Carroça project, which decorated and modified the carts of Brazilian recyclable-waste pickers (many of them from favela areas), drew attention to the largely informal recyclable-collection economy.

Politics and reception

Visual-art projects in favelas have been the subject of recurring critical debate. Three questions recur. First, the appropriate role of outside artists, often international, working in favela settings; some collaborations are residents-led, others are extractive. Second, the political economy of arte favela as a category, particularly when it produces commercial markets that may not return value to communities of origin. Third, the relationship between mural-and-painting projects and broader urban-renewal interventions of varying motives.

Recommended starting points

• The Imagens do Povo archive, online and through Observatório de Favelas exhibitions.
• Bira Carvalho's photographic work from Complexo do Alemão and elsewhere.
• The Galpão Bela Maré exhibition programme.
• Os Gêmeos's São Paulo murals, particularly the 2009 Tate Modern exterior commission and major São Paulo works.
• JR's Women Are Heroes book (2010).