New York felt like a reinterpreted extension of a life I was already living- so Brazil came around and smacked me in the mouth with a humid, firm hand. Being the first ‘new’ region for me in this professional role, Brazil was an exciting learning curve. One of the many questions on my mind was, “How do I move in this multifaceted moment as a professional, traveler, student, and human being?” My first step towards discovering the answer to this question was to dismantle my ‘extreme traveler’ habits (15hr/13mile/$25 days) and settle for a manageable middle ground; leisurely explorations, over reasonable periods of time, with many snack breaks.

During these explorations, I reverted to the basics of thoughtful observation that I teach to all my students. Go slow, with eyes wide. Take a pen and paper, and leave time. Time for questions, time for photos, time for one more breath. On my saunters, I was floored by the visuals of São Paulo. Gobsmacked. So this month, I decided to study the book through its cover: How is art expressed, intentionally and non, on the streets of SP?

São Paulo is an entrepreneurial city of expansion, movement and noise; ‘a cidade das muralhas’. As compared to its colorful, beach-y and Christly counterpart, São Paulo is grey, geometric and capitalistic. The city felt dense and brimming. Sometimes the fullness felt agitating and anticipatory, and other times it felt like the most exciting, undiscovered thing was just around the corner. 

The city’s fullness was exacerbated by its patterns and repetition. All the buildings were stacks. Stacks of windows, stacks of air conditioning units, stacks of smaller houses on top of one another. Stacks of scalloped porches. Stacks of rooftops scaling out indefinitely into the horizon. And when you peeled your eyes from the sky, they found pattern again as they slid down never-ending walls, all the way to the tiles at your feet. Black and white pieces fit into undulations, rhombuses and arches. Over and over, block after block, these patterns (which I found out later are Brazil-wide and region-specific), made things confusingly familiar, while also offering a welcomed sense of place. 

Amidst the brutalist beauty of this metropolitan landscape, there was an equally prominent player that acted as a visual compliment to the mechanic melancholy: street art. Wrapping around every sharp corner, woven into the mortar between bricks, creeping along sidewalks and scaling innumerous stories, were explosions of art and cascades of humanness. 

Brazil is known globally for its commitment to street art, and São Paulo is the country’s leading urban canvas. From government-funded murals, to world-famous graffiti artists, to defiantly incognito pixadores, Paulistanos have sought to speak through the myriad walls of their city since the early 1900s. I want to highlight a street art born specifically from an act of rebellion against the urban development that distinguishes São Paulo today: Pixação [pee-sha-s-ou]. My US brain visually associates pixação most closely with ‘tags’, but the artistic characteristics of the style, the method of practice, and the social/political activism are all deeply rooted in São Paulo history and stimulate fiercely emotional reactions from Paulistanos across the board. 

As compared to other graffiti which is colorful, stylized and often commercial, pixos are jagged, angry and recurrent. They pervade the streets of São Paulo, stretching almost nonstop from the periphery neighborhoods onto the tallest buildings in the city center. Pixação has always been illegal and dangerous to complete; factors that strengthen its central message while also augmenting its global recognition. “Pixação seeks to positively degrade the urban environment.”(1) “Through their pixação painting, these young people impose themselves into the urban space, from which they feel excluded.”(2)

To me, when I first saw pixação, there was obviously a deeply emotional and interconnected storyline behind the dripping black ‘text’. However, even after a month of deep thought, observation and curious research, I am not any closer to comprehending the weight and history behind this artistic practice. — Throughout my month in Brazil, I fell quite deeply into the streets of São Paulo, into my own personal reflections, and into the undulations of life. This mailer— with its delays, European postage and overall visual uncertainty— speaks to a contemplative, occasionally arduous, and deeply committed month. I wanted to share this piece with you as a continuing reflection rather than a final product. My rambling addition to the citric hum of this noisy world.