'Leniency is over': the controversial plan to scrub off So Paulo's famous street art
Mayor João Doria has been down on his knees, spraying grey paint over the city’s beloved graffiti murals. Locals are furious
Shannon Sims in São Paulo
Thursday 23 February 2017 02.00 EST
For many of the 12 million people who live in São Paulo, sitting in traffic and staring out the window at the graffiti-coated walls that line the 23 de Maio thoroughfare is a daily ritual, defining life in the city like the shake of a London umbrella or the swipe of a New York Metrocard. In a city locked in by traffic and grey high-rises, these long swaths of colourful, ever-changing graffiti images – beautiful, ugly, political and sometimes offensive – serve as jagged cuts in the city’s visual monotony.
And then, one morning, the walls were grey.
Among those doing the grey-painting was a tanned, trim man dressed in a fluorescent orange jumpsuit, a dust mask covering his broad smile: João Doria, the new mayor of São Paulo. The painting of the city’s chaotically graffitied walls is one of his administration’s priorities, part of a project called Cidade Linda, or Beautiful City, aimed at tidying up the urban landscape. The programme calls for Saturday morning “cleaning events,” in which workers replace broken street lights, patch crumbling sidewalks, trim unruly tree branches and repaint walls tagged with spray-paint.
. . .
The hardline approach of this centre-right politician (the former host of Brazil’s version of The Apprentice) has set off a debate across Brazil over the societal role of tagging, graffiti and street murals – and how to tell the difference between them.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/feb/23/sao-paulo-street-art-paint-over-joao-doria-brazil-graffiti
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João Doria