Online Urban Art Diaries

Galeria de Arte Urbana (Urban Art Gallery – GAU), through this project, #DiariosdeArteUrbanachallenged artists to share their creative processes and art pieces they have developed since March, during the period of social isolation.

In this way, their work continues to be seen by everyone, but instead of being seen and appreciated on walls and places of artistic intervention in Lisbon, they can be seen on GAU’s web site and on its official Facebook and Instagrampages. To prove that artistic expression has no limits, the Agenda Cultural de Lisboa has spoken to five artists who tell us, in their own words, how it felt to work at home for someone who normally works on the street and on a different scale.

Vitó Julião

www.vitojuliao.com

Working from home during this period was not that strange for me, as I dedicate some time to develop projects in my studio. However, it allowed me to dedicate more time to personal projects, to reinvent myself and to give a bit of my work to the community. During this period, I made a free coloring book available to keep adults and children busy, and created a Paper Toy, also free, at the request of the Instituto Português do Desporto e Juventude. In addition, I also made several Art Prints, which I have made available in my online store , to counteract the reduction of commissioned works.

Telmo Alcobia

www.telmoalcobia.com

I am part of a group, POGO, which had to cancel group work, as well as the exhibition I was planning. So, since art, in my understanding, is about real life, during my isolation I watched how people reacted to these facts and emotions, interpretations, extrapolations, and conspiracies. I reduced expenses to a minimum and concentrated on what I could control. I drew in a way that was possible, in my tiny house, I drew to materialize these ideas, like a transformative diary of all this, creating a series of works entitled Desenhos de Quarentena (Quarantine Drawings), based on albums and songs that kept me company during this season.

Tamara Alves

www.tamaraalves.com

During this period I participated in several projects, but Daydreaming and Underdogs Projecta seem to me to be two good examples of what it is for an artist to use what is available to work with, or to reinvent oneself in the presentation of a street intervention. Daydreaming is a watercolor for the online collective exhibition Right Now, by Galeria Underdogs, where we were asked to work with what we had available. I reused paper. At Underdogs Projecta, several creations about April 25th were designed by various artists around the world. The theme was the 25th of April, taking into account the reflection on the concept of freedom that the current situation raises.

Ozearv

www.instagram.com/ozearv

And suddenly everything changed, the ease with which the street gave itself to my paintings locked itself at home, and I was thrown into my studio, transformed into a lonely island. Distant from everything else, the version of the images I paint is part anxiety, part rest, the bittersweet feeling with which I feel the exterior that has become Covid’s property. I’m not sure what I see and how I see it, it’s too much information blurred in the lines that I can’t follow… I rest on this rubber hand that distances me from everything else. I observe the present and the only thing I see through the window of my house, outside, is the virus jogging… The feelings of the last quarantine, as well as the current ones, are still too surreal.

UtOPiA

www.utopia-arts.com

In the quarantine nothing changed my professional routine, since I do a lot of work in the studio for several collectors at mundo.Na. In fact, I had far more orders during this period. I realized that people, as they could not leave their homes, felt the need to obtain art works as an investment and for pleasure. In fact, I had a lot of requests that I could not fulfill. In other words, I ended up painting twice more than usual, sending out more than 50 canvases to different countries in Europe and the rest of the world. In addition, all shipments were safe and fast.