Pixadores

Upset the Setup makes a very good point about what happened in Brazil when 30 Pixadores "rolled on a gallery to protest 'the marketing, institutionalization and domestication of Street Art'” by the galleries and media, and Wooster Collective issued an apology for showing pictures of what they did.

Upset says:

...IE the real street art kids bombing a gallery exhibition of privileged ’street’ artists. I think that in Brazil, a country where class divisions are so pronounced - that when urban artists who risk their lives every day just to catch wreck in a society that could care less about them, roll up on a bourgeoisie gallery selling copies of Juxtapose and graf on canvas, well they got whats coming to them. I don’t mean to be all Cap from Style Wars/Koma on yall, but hey. If you want to get all teary eyed about something in Brazil, you could start with the poverty/drugs/crime…

Street art has taken off in the contemporary art world in recent years as prices escalate for works by artists like Banksy and others. This popularity seems to arise a little out of some twisted irony in which people like Madonna and Brad Pitt get interested in street art to decorate their homes, and maybe they feel like they somehow connect with what they perceive as cool and hip so that they don't seem quite so irrelevant. What gets lost in this buying frenzy is that street art is often a form of personal expression available to an artist who feels he or she has no voice, or has no other avenue for expression because "poverty/drugs/crime" are such oppressive forces in their lives. I doubt many people who buy art in "bourgeoisie" galleries can connect with that concept, or give it much thought at all. Too bad because I think that's what makes this art form compelling and meaningful. I haven't known poverty, drugs, or crime, but I know the empowerment of discovering one's voice and the fundamental human need for it.