c'è chi scrive e chi cancella
e poi c'è Jessica Stewart che racconta
e poi c'è Jessica Stewart che racconta
Erasure
Laszlo Biro
via Braccio da Montone 56 (Rome)
Opening Saturday, November 16 at 7 pm
The show runs from November 16 – December 1
“This project was born from the idea to discover the other side of the street art and graffiti that I’ve been documenting for quite some time.
I wanted to capture the deterioration and transformation of walls in order to better understand the changing nature of the city. I wanted to see what happened to pieces painted long ago, to capture those newly cleaned spaces that will soon be filled with tags, and to actually follow Rome’s cleaning crews. I got to know the women and men to the AMA urban decor teams; the very people whose job it is to buff writing and take down illegally posted ads in order to be able to follow their work and show their side of the story, as they are the people apart from the artists who are on the streets more than anyone.
In my various outings with the team, from Portuense to Acqua Bullicante, all the way to Ostia, we talked about murals, street art, tags, and much more. I was struck by the fact that they appreciate the artistic value of street art, sometimes without even realizing what the world of street art and graffiti is all about and what the motivations behind the works are.
Often the first hurdle we have in understanding and judging something is the willingness and patience to observe. After that it is up to each of us to decide whether a freshly painted wall is an erasure of what’s underneath or a cleaning in order to restore order or simply a new, temporary, skin of the city. ”
~ J. S.
Since its creation in 2008, Jessica Stewart’s photo blog has become a point of reference for the street art scene in Rome . RomePhotoBlog is a place of discovery both for those who live in the city as well as internationally, with a capacity for documenting the transformation of the visual landscape and contemporary art.
After recounting the work of many artists, Jessica Stewart, with “Erasure,” thinks about their disappearance, their cancellation, or their simple deterioration.
She constructs an archeology of the city’s skin, returning to places and streets where there were once works or where they are now layered atop one another. Jessica also portrays the work of Rome’s municipal urban decor squads, capturing the “erasure”, a typical characteristic of street art: it being devoid of mediation and distance, subject to time constructively.
