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Based between Paris and London and with a background in SFX design, YOLA is one of 21 international urban and street artists who have donated their work to the #ART4PEACE campaign, spearheaded by London-based peacebuilding charityInternational Alert. Featuring in an exhibition titled #ART4PEACE: Peace from the street up!, that took place earlier this month, the works are inspired by the theme of ‘peace in our cities’, with many of the artists themselves coming from conflict-affected regions.

YOLA creates “paste-up” street art in cities all over the world, often using Renaissance art as a starting point for the images. We spoke to her about her work and the significance of urban art.

Why did you initially choose to create street art?

It was an accident. I wanted to attract the attention of a gallery that was ignoring my emails so I pasted up a large piece on the wall in front of the gallery. Hi guys, look at that! They still ignored me, but in the process I fell in love with doing art in the street. It changed my life. I saw my visual becoming part of the urban environment. It fascinated me – because it wasn’t my picture any more – it became part of the city, other artists would come and tag it, or deface it, and it started to have its own life and I thought it was very cool. So pasting up is just the beginning of the creative process that continues afterwards. I used to go back and document the process of deterioration of my piece. Gradually I started looking for other places – I always chose derelict, abandoned buildings – because I don’t want to deface clean walls, just add something beautiful to old, ugly walls. I would choose the place, photograph it, do a mock up of the piece and find the people to do it with, people who live there. I try to work with locals and paste it up after that. I like the fact that people I meet become part of my art and then my art becomes part of their daily life. It becomes a visual part of the city and the city itself is part of it.

There is a strong contrasting element to your Renaissance street art – why is this such a key element in your work?

The idea of Renaissance started with the project in Warsaw, the area of it called Praga – very edgy, derelict and criminal. I wanted to bring some light and beauty to the area. It was exactly the philosophy of the Renaissance – neo-platonic. The idea of eternal life achieved only by love and beauty. I stared to choose very well known, iconic pictures and play with their meaning by contrasting it with the contemporary models and contemporary problems. For example – Leonardo da Vinci painted The Virgin and Child with St Anne – I recreated the composition and changed only the models – used two modern girls. The picture became controversial in Poland, the viewers didn’t see the original meaning anymore, they replaced it with their own interpretation. So the cultural and social context influences the reception of the painting, changes its meaning. In the original they were two female saints, but now they were perceived as two lesbians. Similarly, in the image of Pieta I tried to speak about ageism in the idea of beauty – I replaced young beautiful angels with elderly ladies from a social centre – equally beautiful, but perceived differently in standard terms. So the original painting serves as a starting point for a discussion about its social meaning. Another example is Doubting Thomas – based on the painting by Caravaggio in which Thomas wants to touch the wound of Jesus to believe it. In my interpretation we can see a bunch of street-artists from Blender Studios in Melbourne, one of them has a spray-can and he is spraying on the symbolic wound – doing this he creates his own, modern religion or belief, or whatever you want to call it.

Have you seen the street art scene become more prominent/responsive in relation to recent debates surrounding gender or immigration for example?

There are some guys, not many though, who engage with current issues. I wish there were more. I think it should be an obligation because we work in the streets, so we should speak about things that are important instead of painting cats and dogs and butterflies.

You have completed major street art projects internationally – do you see big differences in different countries’ attitude to and adoption of street art or is the medium fairly ubiquitous now?

Yes, absolutely. There are huge differences between the countries, just like differences between cultures and customs. Some countries treat it purely commercially and others where it’s part of their freedom of speech. Argentina for example. I did a project there with local artists Jazz and Ever – their art has grown out of the strong tradition of engaged, political street art and still carries a very strong meaning. It’s also widely accepted – you will not get arrested even if you’re doing an illegal piece. Because of that their street art is on a very high level. I loved Melbourne as well, where there are whole streets where you can express yourself artistically without being chased away. Local artists are very welcoming and open to working together with strangers. Europe and the US are much more territorial and competitive.

How do you feel your work with CGI composition, working in animation feed into your independent work as an artist?

Those two worlds cross over all the time. I use my professional knowledge in my street art. No matter what medium I choose, I always think about it as a collage or compositing. Straightforward images or photos seem boring to me.

What does it mean to you as an artist to be represented in the ART4PEACE campaign – and in what ways do you feel street art can be used to break barriers and raise questions about society?

Street art is in itself like a huge advertising campaign – it has the potential to be seen by many. But we don’t deal with ‘washing powder’ – we sell ideas. This is where lies its potential and its role. We can’t treat it as a decorative wall-paper, we have to speak about important things. That’s why the ART4PEACE campaign feels very now. My piece speaks about love – two elderly people fulfilled by love. That’s my message to the world. “Be cool, don’t treat yourself too seriously, life is to short for that, it will end soon, so love each other when you still have time for it.”

Find out more about the exhibition and auction on the Talking Peace website: www.talkingpeacefestival.org/art4peace