Exploring Fiction and Reality: Curating Urban Art in Evasiones

Urban art has always thrived on the streets, embracing the rawness and unpredictability of public spaces. But what happens when this same art, so deeply tied to its environment, enters a gallery setting? Evasiones. The Street as Fiction from B-Murals dives into this very question, exploring how urban art and graffiti navigate the line between fiction and reality, the street and the gallery. Curated in collaboration with INDAGUE, this project challenges viewers to think differently about the role of urban art, asking how these forms of expression can exist authentically in an institutional setting.

This interview is the first of a 3-part series that connects you with the curators and artists behind Evasiones. In part one, we speak with curators Jaume Gómez Muñoz and Mathieu Tremblin about the exhibition’s curatorial vision, the concept of fiction as a theme, and the evolving role of graffiti in both public spaces and galleries. In the following parts, we’ll dive deeper into the perspectives of the participating artists, exploring their interpretations of evasion and their relationship with urban environments, as well as how humor and subversion play a role in urban art.

As we go through this series, we’ll untangle how public art, city life, and creative freedom all weave together—while exploring how both artists and everyday people can flip the script on the spaces around us.

Jaume Gómez Muñoz – Curator

How did the idea for Evasiones. The Street as Fiction come about, and how does it reflect the goals of B-Murals and INDAGUE?

The concept of Evasiones came from a collective reflection between the three curators of the exhibition and as a commission from B-Murals to INDAGUE, the Spanish Association for the Research and Dissemination of Graffiti and Urban Art. Each curator—Juan, Keko, and I—created an initial draft of the type of exhibition we envisioned, and we ultimately merged our ideas into a single proposal.

We began with the premise that exhibitions of graffiti and urban art are, by definition, an oxymoron—a contradiction. The only true space for graffiti and urban art is the street or the underground. In galleries or museums, it’s only possible to present ‘exhibitions about’ graffiti and urban art, never ‘exhibitions of’ them, because the subcultural, procedural, and contextual characteristics of these forms are far more defining than their aesthetic outcomes.

With this idea and others in mind, we developed a text agreed upon by the curators and sent it to the artists. We were clear from the start that our selection of creators and artists would be anything but typical. We asked them not to present their usual or final work, but rather an experiment—something that would speak to their creative process, showing how they adapt to different contexts and the tools or languages they use in each situation.

The exhibition emphasizes the relationship between urban art and public spaces. How do you think graffiti and urban art redefine these spaces?

I don’t think this exhibition really emphasizes that as its main objective. Many of the works we’ve exhibited are experiments that, by chance or logic, align with the concept of Intermural Art proposed by R. Schacter. The exhibited works participate in the inside-outside dynamic of urban spaces, as well as the art system. Some pieces carry the ethical and aesthetic codes and practices of graffiti and urban art. Other works address subcultural marketing, the relevance of documentation in graffiti and urban art, the drive behind tagging, or the merging of these forms with languages like photography, film, ceramics, and so on.

Graffiti and urban art redefine urban spaces in very different ways. Graffiti is a subculture with very fixed ethical and aesthetic codes, and it appropriates or recycles spaces and materials for the benefit of the writers and the game that is played among them. For graffiti, the city (both urban and suburban) is essentially a playing field. It redefines these spaces, but mainly for the writers’ own benefit and enjoyment. Occasionally, some writers create murals with more open visual codes that the broader society can enjoy, but this is only a small part of the reality of the subculture.

Urban art is more open in its codes and aims to redefine spaces with a more artistic, cultural, and social purpose. The truth is that much of today’s urban art has little to do with what was created in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, or 2000s. Many creators and researchers of the phenomenon believe that, particularly since the end of the first decade of the 21st century, urban art has lost its intimate, poetic, and experiential character, giving way to a kind of large-format ‘unified aesthetic’ that has more to do with marketing than reflective art.

Many creators and researchers believe that…urban art has lost its intimate, poetic, and experiential character, giving way to a kind of large-format ‘unified aesthetic’…

How do you balance the artistic autonomy of graffiti and its integration into mainstream culture within the context of this exhibition?

Graffiti is completely autonomous when it comes to exhibitions—it doesn’t need them at all.

In the previous lines, I think we’ve discussed how our exhibition does not, in any way, reposition graffiti within mainstream culture. In fact, our exhibition only has one piece with aerosol intervention, and only one incorporates the word ‘graffiti.’

I understand that dozens of ‘Graffiti Museums’ and ‘Street Art Galleries’ have opened around the world, and in most of them, you’ll see lots of color, animal figures, fantastical imagery done with aerosol techniques, lots of dripping, tagging, and a lot of visual noise and confusion. There’s none, or almost none, of that in our exhibition.

That being said, of course, the exhibition does partially address graffiti and urban art.

Can you explain the role of fiction in the exhibition? How does the street become a space for both creative and social constructions?

The idea of fiction (or, if you like, simulation) comes from the dense, complex, and fragile moment we are currently experiencing in the world of images and art. We are living in a visually overwhelming time, with constant exhibitions, creations, publications, and advertising campaigns within the creative/artistic sector. We are fully immersed in a post-capitalist digital production system that continually exhausts us with more and more images, art, and advertising—most of which are fakes, poor-quality copies of copies of copies. These works seem to function in the mind of the creator, but they actually say nothing and remain just a surface of color.

We’ve played with the idea of the fake by including different ‘non-works’ or pieces that weren’t even conceived as artworks by the artists themselves.

The street is always a space for social consensus and dissent. It is a place of friction where both fantastic and terrible things happen at the same time. The public space is full of meanings and messages, created by all types of citizens, the vast majority of whom are not artists. In traditional urban art, the street was used, taken over, and symbolically and politically occupied. Nowadays, most of the spaces where urban art is created are either commissioned or managed, and in both cases, there is an intention to construct these spaces socially.

In the world of graffiti, this social construction has developed naturally, especially through the unauthorized recycling of thousands of walls in neighborhoods around the world. This mural aspect is the friendliest and most figurative part of the subculture, and from it, a certain kind of muralism emerged in the late 1980s, which has gradually converged into a segment of contemporary urban art in recent decades.

What new insights or reflections do you hope visitors will take away from the show?

Most graffiti can only be considered political in terms of its execution conditions, the acquisition of materials, the conquest of surfaces, and the sabotage of installations. Other than that, it’s a highly codified visual language, deeply embedded in itself, with a rather apolitical character.

We emphasize that Evasiones. The Street as Fiction is not an exhibition of graffiti or urban art. I don’t believe this exhibition particularly contributes to challenging stereotypes about graffiti and urban art, as these forms have their own momentum, and each graffiti writer or urban artist has a personal notion of them.

This exhibition may help to open up meanings, to explore other paths, and it is, indeed, a slap in the face to the traditional, colorful exhibitions that dominate these sectors. We have works that talk about site-specific actions, ignorant graffiti, subcultural marketing, documentation, photography, or works that refer to historical graffiti. It’s true that the selection of works and artists is diverse, and it’s unlikely that their works will reconnect with each other, except for maybe a couple of artists.

This exhibition may help to open up meanings, to explore other paths, and it is, indeed, a slap in the face to the traditional, colorful exhibitions that dominate these sectors.

Mathieu Tremblin for Les Frères Ripoulain – Artist

How do you approach the balance between artistic expression and societal norms in your creative process?

The use of graffiti in films and fictional series illustrates the historical role of public inscription as a way of sharing common experiences. This use goes beyond the polarized contemporary interpretation that reduces graffiti to a mere act of vandalism, a view that emerged in the early 20th century with its criminalization, as analyzed by French historian Philippe Artières.

In what ways does your piece challenge or expand on the common narratives around graffiti and urban art?

The global popularity of American graffiti tends to reduce all types of public inscriptions to a simplistic, juvenile urban game. The Graffiti Fiction series reintroduces a complexity that existed in Europe (and beyond) prior to the 1960s, which allowed public space to be transformed into a forum for expression.

How do you navigate the commercialization of urban art while maintaining authenticity?

Engaging in visual archaeology by extracting graffiti that appear in films and television series brings a new, purely cinephilic interest to the act of viewing. The quality of the production becomes secondary, as any narrative—even that of a cheesy romantic comedy—can be of interest when it comes to the role of graffiti in fiction.

Wrapping up – part one

It’s clear that the intention of the Evasiones curation process was to craft an exhibition that stays true to the roots of urban art while pushing its boundaries. By avoiding the typical colorful, chaotic displays of graffiti, they’ve created something much more reflective and experimental, staying loyal to the raw, autonomous nature of street art.

Evasiones is on view until November 23, 2024

B-Murals Centre d’Art Urbà
C/ Ferran Turné 1-11, 08027 Barcelona
Open Wednesday to Saturday, 12 pm – 7 pm. Free admission.

Next up, we’ll dive into how the artists themselves approach the idea of evasion—how they use urban spaces to both escape and redefine the world around them. Stay tuned for creative perspectives on how they bend, break, and reshape the rules of the streets!