“In one single hectic night of paint and spray, BLU cancelled his famous and beautiful graffitis from the walls of Bologna. Here, a powerful cultural institution, Genus Bononiae, funded by private banks and chaired by former dean of the local university Fabio Roversi Monaco, is removing from the walls the works of the best known writers in order to display them – in some cases without the authors’ consent – in an exhibition on street art that will open to the public next Thursday in the city’s historic Palazzo Pepoli.
With the help of a group of squatters, the anonymous writer from Bologna who was signalled in 2011 by the English newspaper “The Guardian” as one of the world’s ten best street artists, destroyed all of his works that were still visible in town: graffitis that had been created throughout twenty or so years of work.
Blu, who has always refused to be interviewed by mainstream media, gave the writers collective known as Wu Ming the task of explaining the meaning of his gesture through their blog “Giap”: “The ‘Street Art’exhibit is the symbol of an idea of the city, based on private hoarding and the transformation of everybody’s life and creativity into a private asset, that must be fought. Confronting the arrogance, worthy of a colonial governor, of those who feel free to remove paintings from walls, the only thing one can do is to make those paintings disappear. Act by subtraction, make the looting impossible. The exhibit clears the way for the accumulation of street art, all for the benefit of ruthless collectors and merchants of stolen artwork. All this, in a city that on one hand prosecutes teenage writers and invokes street decorum, while on the other celebrates itself as the cradle of street art”.”
- via Repubblica.it
