Art Is A Revolutionary Act
Especially when the revolution is right beneath your feet.
Even a casual perusal of past Cappuccinos will show this publication’s enthusiasm for street art. When the world is your canvas, amazing things can happen. Banksy, the most famous of these urban artists, stated the dynamic of street art most succinctly when he wrote, “Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing.”
In an unlovely, square-cornered, industrialized world where flair and/or variation is frowned upon, street art sometimes gives the artist (almost always poor) the only piece of real estate he will ever own. It simultaneously provides us, the viewer, with an interesting alternative to boring surfaces and reminds us that there are other perspectives than our own.
Standing under a freeway overpass with a stencil and a can of spray paint is thrilling in the way of most transgressive activities, addictive even, especially since the police are ready to arrest you at any minute. The best street art is, at least in my opinion, that which offers a mirror to society and to us.
Unlike stencil-artist Banksy, street artist Ememem chooses sidewalk cracks and facades for his canvases and ceramic tile for his medium. Like Banksy, he insists on keeping his identity a secret, working alone and at night on his startlingly beautiful mosaics, which appear like starbursts of color on dreary expanses of concrete.
For me, his work is metaphorical, one that is easily understood. In every “wound,” there is beauty, whether a sidewalk or a human soul. The choice is ours. We can either leave the gaping pothole in our psyche or we can use that volcanic soil to grow something useful or beautiful—or both. But make no mistake. The point is not to heal a crack or even to pave over it (we Americans are especially good at the latter). It is to come into deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us, to let whatever’s there ooze up, spill out, congeal, and perhaps—eventually—gleam with beauty.
Ememem works in Lyon, France. His creations adorn the streets there—350 in all. For the last six years, he has stolen out into the night and filled in divots, cracks, potholes, and fissures with his sumptuous tilework. Some, but not all, of his installations bear his signature of a trowel positioned above his name.
He calls himself a “pothole knight,” a “pavement surgeon,” which seems hopelessly modest considering the stunning beauty of his art. His work he refers to as “flackings,” which is a neologism of the French word flaque (puddle). Indeed, his brilliant mosaics do puddle at the feet of those who have the sense to admire them.
Walking tours have sprung up around his flackings. His Instagram account has more than 147,000 followers. I am one of them.
Wisely, Ememem remains in the shadows. “It’s important for me to remain a little mysterious,” he has written. “And it’s also because I’m not very talented when it comes to social interactions.”
Even those who come into regular contact with Ememem are unwilling to “out” him, including his agent and his tile supplier. His website boasts the sparest of biographies, noting that he was once a songwriter with a well-known rock group. His father was a house tiler, which might mean Ememem received formal or informal training in the craft, and he is said to speak French with a foreign accent.
Although his Wikipedia claims Ememem is of French derivation, The Guardian says otherwise, stating that he is Italian. He once told an Israeli journalist that the name Ememem referred to the sound his moped makes when he revs it up.
Since he doesn’t pull permits to do the work and sometimes adopts disguises, such as dressing up as a plumber’s overalls to give the impression that he is authorized personnel, I would be tempted to say that artists like Ememem need to legitimized and paid. But perhaps turning a blind eye is the better option. To bring his work into the light of day would be to subject him to the very scrutiny he hopes to avoid.
Ememem writes, “The goal is to spread a touch of poetry under the jaded soles of our shoes, to provoke a moment of amazement, a smile.”
This is exactly why we need artists, now more than ever before.
Without them, we are condemned to suffer blight without the beauty and sidewalks without the poetry.
Copyright © 2022 Stacey Eskelin
What are your thoughts on street art in general or Ememem in particular? I want to hear them! Leave your comments in the comments section below.
I am always fascinated by street art. I’m going to have to go to Lyon now, lol). There’s an artist in NY named Paul Richard who does beautiful drip portraits in black paint. There’s an artist in London whose name is out of my head that is everywhere and they also pop up in downtown NY. I’m also fond of Stik. Even what others condemn as just graffiti and not art I find fascinating- the need to express. What passion, need, longing drives someone to take can to wall to share what they are feeling. How invisible does someone have to feel in order to start tagging to say “I am here!” I am always moved by the response to social change expressed in paint - the pandemic, George Floyd, the housing crisis, Ukraine, reproductive rights. The street cleans up and then something happens and voila - opinions start to be expressed. It is usually the very people who need to hear what’s being said who are the most “outraged” by the desecration. Viva le artiste!
I've probably told of the experience of the artist doing a chalk "portrait" on a sidewalk in Westwood (UCLA's neighborhood in west L.A., for those who don't know) because it is always the thing that comes to mind with these stories. I couldn't tell if it was from a classic painting or simply from the artist's mind, but it was beautiful and moving. Something very sad and lonely in the woman he was drawing, but also the "meta" consideration of the art work itself: this was work was a Mayfly that would vanish entirely with the next rain (never mind the feet walking over it once the artist himself was gone.)
Also brings to mind the buskers I've encountered: the famous jazz saxophone quartet doing a Bach Brandenburg on a street corner in San Francisco; the haunting acoustics in the subway stations. Again, though, all of it transient, discovered only because of an accident in time and space such as only a city ever makes possible.