Street Arts

interview for Kosova

1. When did you start doing grafics?

2. Did you have exhibitions, when where?

3. As I saw you usually do graffitis on wall's of old houses. Tell me more about the

places you do your artworks?

4. What about the themes of your graffitis? The messages?

5. How time do you need to finish an artwork?

6. Which are your famous artworks?

7. Did you hear any time about Kosova, our artist, would you like to come here?

8. Which is the reason you do art, if you were not an artist, what would you like to

do?

I decided that I would like to be an “artist” when I was 13;

I was born In the simple labour family and was growing in the area where at 5 o’clock in the morning there was hundreds busses coming to take a workers to there factory. I didn’t want the life like this. I didn’t want to start every day in the same bus going to the same factory.

So … I had an ant … she was was a painter end a professor in an art school

and I just wanted to be like her …

In the beginning she didn’t take me seriously; she saw my works /13 years old works/ and said to me – listen my girl, I don’t want to be to cruel but really I can’t see any potential on what you are doing. You are not any special talent. It’s nice, but at your age everybody can do that…

And I was like “ on non… really, I want to do the art like you, I’m sure I can do it…

so she suggested to me some public drawing lessons and when I comeback to see her few months later, she was like “wow … not bad… really … listen , you can stop those lessens and I will prepare you to the exam to some good art school…

So it was like that

And when I was 15 I passed exam to same prestige art school in my city, and the adventure started from that point.

2. I had a few exhibitions

3. the idea of doing art work on the street came from the desire to show my pictures to the large public not only to the gallery’s visitors;

the places that I use to choose to expose my pictures are also there complement.

That’s why I like the old walls with a lot of textures and life.

4. the themes are of my graphics and photos are connected with human being ; with loneliness in the big city’s, tolerance to the differences between each other, different colours, different sex orientations, old age – ageism etc

5. it depends , it can be few days, it can be few years ;-)

but usually I’m working by series, and it takes few months between preparing the subject, find the models, photo-shooting them, work on graphics after that and stick on the wall finally. Its 2-3 months

7. off course I heart about Kosovo, the whole word heart about the tragedies there,

I don’t know a lot about art scene in Kosovo but I would be very glade and inspired if I could do some project there;

8. Actually I can not see a different think that I would like to do in my live;

I like watching, like other people like listening music for example or eating; me – I like to watch, to see the world; what I can see outside build me inside. Or destroy me if it’s visually boring for example.

Watching pictures and produces them it’s the only think that make me alive;

It was the Renaissance that has started my appreciation of painting and I don’t think it was accidental. I think a lot of young artists fall in love with the Renaissance, this is where they discover perspective, learn light composition. Then for me came Art Nouveau, Schiele, and of course, the turn of the 21 century.

In paining, putting well known and recognisable icons and symbols in a contemporary context is nothing new. Artists have been doing it for centuries. It’s like finger exercises, a dialogue with the masters, but everyone wants to interpret those themes in their own way. It’s a bit like making movies about love, the subject is always the same, but the execution is different each time.

Going back to painting – let’s take Venus of Urbino for instance – Titian painted her in 1538 and it was quite revolutionary then. He painted her in a completely different context to the ones accepted in those days. Because Venus was a Greek goddess, she should be frolicking in a white gown in the clouds of the Mount Olympus and not pose naked in some Florentine mansion. A few centuries later (1863) a guy named Eduard Manet casts in the role of Venus a well known and not so well respected prostitute. Shock horror.

A few more centuries on, Jola Kudela adds her interpretation to the mix. But it’s not only about messing around with the form.

Each of those images has its meaning, the original one, i.e. “what was the poet’s intention all those centuries ago”, as well as my own, my commentary or interpretation. Saint Sebastian for instance – a Roman soldier tortured to death because of his sexual orientation. It’s an image and a symbol that has been interpreted millions of times in paintings, photography and film. Instead of being a Roman soldier, my Saint Sebastian is a modern person in black underwear, half-girl, half-boy, the so-called troisieme sex, persecuted for being different, for not fitting in. My Sebastian is being attacked with darts that symbolise “play”, being ridiculed, laughed at. But those darts can also hurt, they cut deep and leave scars, they exclude.

I have chosen the paintings in such a way that every person with an average knowledge of art history would be able to recognise the original it refers to and to understand the dialogue with the original. Renaissance artists (they weren’t an exception of course) invited their contemporaries to do the modelling for them. Very often these decisions were highly controversial: a painter would paint a dignitary and put him in a crowd of “saints” consisting of local down-and-outs or other dubious characters. Hence my desire to include locals from the Warsaw’s district of Praga in my images, as in the image of Christ, and the idea to involve people from a local day centre. I found the centre through Malgosia Zarzycka and Edyta Piasecka who collaborated with me on the project.

The project took seed in Paris and then lay dormant in a drawer, or rather on a hard-drive, for a while. Then, thanks to Malgosia Zarzycka and Jacek Schmidt, it suddenly blossomed in a truly renaissance way.

The spots to hang the images had been chosen with the street party of Zabkowska Street in mind, so the visitors could see those places during their stroll around and perceive the happening as an open gallery. I always make sure the surroundings of my visuals complement the image and interact with it. The majority of my images found their place near Zabkowska Street with one, or say three, exceptions. One of those was Pieta. The image found its place further away, near Sprzeczna Street, because of the exceptional beauty of the location. An old wall with remains of crumbling flats, crumbling life-stories, becomes an integral part of Pieta’s background, while the courtyard transforms into a chapel.

I remember a poignant moment during the hanging of the image – a pedestrian approached us, took the image in, lowered his head, crossed himself and said after a short silence: ‘it’s very beautiful, is it going to stay here? Thank you, thank you very much, it’s beautiful’, and he walked away...

It was very moving to see his reaction.

Contact with the local models gave me loads of positive energy and a conviction that in such joint effort one can find happiness and joy. These are the true roots of the project, the Renaissance form of Neo-Platonism, practiced by Botticelli, who believed in reaching eternal happiness through beauty and love. I didn’t think of eternal happiness while working on this project, but I wanted to enrich Praga with a bit of beauty and joy. At the end it was the other way round – it was Praga and its inhabitants who brought a lot of fun, joy, laughter and satisfaction into my life.

Inviting the folks from the day centre was supposed to be a slightly subversive act: as if entering a haven for Fallen Angels, all aged 60 or over, who end up in a day centre because they can’t cope with life in society. The society they contributed to throughout their lives and which now pays them back a pittance, not enough for a decent living. To be honest I was expecting human misery and what I found instead was a bunch of happy people. I think it’s mainly thanks to the lady who runs the centre, who gives those lost souls a lot of warmth and affection, creating a place where they can shelter from loneliness.

Why not accidental people from the street? Partly for logistical reasons, it’s difficult and time-consuming to accost strangers in the street, but mostly because in my project I wanted to highlight the notion of rejection and tolerance as well as differences and acceptance of other human beings.

- Fluxmagazine.com
http://www.fluxmagazine.com/artist-yola/Peace from the street up – Interview with street artist YOLA October 12, 2015 Art, art featured, Books, Books featured, Culture, Culture featured words Mia KriklerA piece of...

- Hungertv.com
Art & CultureART4PEACE: YOLAPublished on 21 September 2015Post article on TumblrEmail to a friendShareBased between Paris and London and with a background in SFX design, YOLA is one of 21 international urban and street artists who have donated...

- Streetartsf.com - Interview
http://streetartsf.com/interview/yola/ ARTIST INTERVIEW: YOLA By Street Art SF Team on October 03, 2012 Also what is really cool is that other people start tagging your work, and your picture gets another life, a new context, and it starts to get...

- Vicious Circle Buenos Aires
One city. A handful of friends. Many different nationalities. One common aim - Vicious Circle in Buenos Aires. The meaning of the original painting “Vicious Circle” by a Polish Symbolist painter Jacek Malczewski,...

- Sw. Sebastian - Zabkowska 1 Warszawa
a Roman soldier tortured to death because of his sexual orientation. It’s an image and a symbol that has been interpreted millions of times in paintings, photography and film. My Saint Sebastian is a modern person in black underwear, someone...

Street Arts