Sao Paulo: Art Protest

When Rafael Augustaitiz – a student and long-time member of Brazil’s pixacao tagging movement – staged his graduation show along with the rest of his class in Sao Paulo at the highly esteemed private art college Belas Artes last Wednesday, he took a different route that made the news and pissed a ton of people off, but did get them talking. He invited 40 to 50 (the numbers vary on all reports) pichadores to help him mount a protest about what essentially is the divide between the poor and the rich, between art and how far it can go. Pixacao, for those who don’t know much about it, is a visual form that a lot of disadvantaged youth identify with here in Brazil. During the show, the group went on a rampage using spray paint as artillery, bombing the school with their cryptic-like tags, even spraying officials in the face who tried to stop them. It was chaos and now, after the event, school administrators are thinking about pulling Augustaitiz’s financial scholarship. This insane bit of rebellion was captured on film, and you can see it here to decide whether the message came through loud and clear or just lost its gas.