Jonah Mantell | Tulane University (original) (raw)
Address: New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
less
Related Authors
Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Rio de Janeiro
Uploads
Papers by Jonah Mantell
Pixação is a street tagging aesthetic with roots in current day São Paulo, Brazil. Pixação covers... more Pixação is a street tagging aesthetic with roots in current day São Paulo, Brazil. Pixação covers São Paulo from head to toe and continues to spread. Pixadores (those who engage in pixação) are almost exclusively young men, often afro-descendant, living in the peripheries of São Paulo. Pixadores tag the most visible spaces in the city, the tallest buildings, and the most famous monuments ensuring their work will be seen. Attempts to create representations and a definition of the movement are rapidly appearing as pixação grows. São Paulo residents, the Brazilian government, and the mass media define pixação as destructive, criminal, and dirty. Scholars and artists frame pixação as a heroic, revolutionary art form that has the power to combat the evil that exists in Brazilian society and transform the international art world. These interpretations do not define the street tagging but instead create misunderstandings and demean and threaten pixação. In this paper I argue that after examining the claims made by outsiders of pixação, it becomes clear that these definitions are simply part of larger limits of created representations of marginalized movements that threaten dominant society. These representations then say more about the dominant culture than the expression actually being discussed. The attempts to capture the movement within these unjust frames contribute to attempts to co-opt, appropriate, and commodify pixação pulling it into a mainstream, dominant culture production with price tags instead of pushing it into a space where the movement is free to define itself.
Pixação is a street tagging aesthetic with roots in current day São Paulo, Brazil. Pixação covers... more Pixação is a street tagging aesthetic with roots in current day São Paulo, Brazil. Pixação covers São Paulo from head to toe and continues to spread. Pixadores (those who engage in pixação) are almost exclusively young men, often afro-descendant, living in the peripheries of São Paulo. Pixadores tag the most visible spaces in the city, the tallest buildings, and the most famous monuments ensuring their work will be seen. Attempts to create representations and a definition of the movement are rapidly appearing as pixação grows. São Paulo residents, the Brazilian government, and the mass media define pixação as destructive, criminal, and dirty. Scholars and artists frame pixação as a heroic, revolutionary art form that has the power to combat the evil that exists in Brazilian society and transform the international art world. These interpretations do not define the street tagging but instead create misunderstandings and demean and threaten pixação. In this paper I argue that after examining the claims made by outsiders of pixação, it becomes clear that these definitions are simply part of larger limits of created representations of marginalized movements that threaten dominant society. These representations then say more about the dominant culture than the expression actually being discussed. The attempts to capture the movement within these unjust frames contribute to attempts to co-opt, appropriate, and commodify pixação pulling it into a mainstream, dominant culture production with price tags instead of pushing it into a space where the movement is free to define itself.