From Fine Art to Street Art - Alice Pasquini

In this podcast episode, the host interviews street artist Alicja Pasquini. They discuss her experiences as a woman in street art and the challenges she has faced throughout her career. They also talk about how COVID-19 has impacted her art and what inspires her to create. Alicja shares stories about her travels and how she chooses what to paint on the street. She talks about the different ways street art is perceived and treated by governments and communities around the world. Alicja also discusses the difference between painting independently and working with institutions. She shares her journey into street art and how it combines her love for art and hip-hop culture. Hello everyone, welcome back to your Art Toon Podcast, I am Vaso Karmenikos, your host, and I'm very excited about this episode because my guest today is one of the top street artists in the world. Her name is Alicja Pasquini, she's from Rome, and I wanted to meet her since October 2015. That was when I accidentally stumbled upon her work here on Brick Lane in London, and I instantly fell in love with her art, with her way of expressing human feelings. I asked Alicja about what is it like to be a woman in street art, and what were the most challenging situations and locations that she faced throughout her career. She told me about how COVID impacted her art, and what does generally inspire her to create. I really enjoyed speaking to her, and thank you all for tuning in, and I hope you'll enjoy listening to it. Thank you once again for coming, you're in your studio in Rome. Yes, thank you, thank you. What is it like in Rome at these strange times? Today is spring, so it's even more crazy, you know, when it's spring, and there is this situation, everybody walking around with masks. But we have been through a very tough period, you know, in Italy through the pandemic last winter, and now things are going a little better, but of course it's not solved already. So from last week, restaurants are open again, and shops, so it looks quite normal. Detection of the mask, and I mean, this new reality is quite freaky, but in Italy it was very, very tough. And so now it looks a little better. Yeah, I remember last year of checking the news, and it all started, I mean, in London, so we were first getting news from Italy, and what is it like there, and the situation almost exactly repeated here, so nobody expected it at the beginning. So I'm glad that right now, you said like everything is kind of getting better, stabilizing. Yeah, there are some areas in Italy that are still, they divided Italy in colors, like, you know, red is where you can't move, and we are in a yellow zone, like a traffic light. But I can't say that it's solved, because the hospitals are still full of people and everything. But yes, compared to last year, like in March, because I remember in January I was doing an exhibition in Amsterdam, and I was traveling, I've been in London, painting in the Heathrow Airport, and we were listening about this China, you know, this China situation, like it was very, very far. So when it was exploding here, we were shocked, because it was not expected that there must be the same story for all the world. Yeah, I always tell people, like, that if somebody in December 2019 would say that the whole world will shut down all the shops from Italy to Britain to United States, nobody would believe you, they would think that you should be locked down. I told you before we started that I shared your artworks in my newsletter and got a lot of feedback, people asking many questions, and I kind of wanted to say how I found your work myself. It was in 2015, I was just walking around Brick Lane, and I saw one of your portraits on the metal door, if I'm not mistaken. So I stopped, started looking, and then took a picture standing next to it, and then went and Googled you and found your Instagram page, and since then I'm following. I wanted to ask, what's the process of choosing what to depict on the street? Do you consider audience, or you just draw what your heart says? So, when you paint in the street, you have a sort of responsibility to me, because one thing, if you are an artist in the studio, you are free to paint anything you want. When I'm on the street, I always think about who will see that, and so if I'm near, maybe, you know, a school, a church, or I don't know. But most of the time, inspiration is coming from the street itself. I mean, it's coming from the shape of the place, the spot where I want to paint, about the color I see in the background, or, sure, the culture. I mean, it's not the same thing to paint something in Singapore, or in Moscow, you know, or in New York. So the culture, the color, all this is important for my inspiration in the moment I want to paint. Now we are talking about small intervention, very spontaneous, and what is more street art to me. Of course, it's different when they pay me to go somewhere and paint a very big wall, you know. So in that case, it's even more responsibility, I feel. But it's another kind of exchange with the viewer. It's interesting to me that the viewer is a citizen, because at the beginning of all this, when I started, when I was young, so many years ago, people have been the people to push me to go forward in this research. So to make me understand it was not something that was meaningful for me, because I started to paint in the street, like, as a contrast with the academism, with the fine art study. Can you imagine in Italy to study fine art? It's very, quite old fashioned. And so graffiti at the beginning was for me the way to get over it, to find an art that was more in contact with the people. And the part I really like of this that I like to call more contextual art is to get involved in the lives of the people, even when I left. And to see how this is a small intervention, they are very vulnerable and very fragile, and how they survive on the street for many, many years. I assume it's easy when in Italy, in the location in the country that you are familiar with. But when you go somewhere where you didn't live in, maybe you don't know culture or the story of the location as well. What's the research process of the location is like? How do you encounter kind of those local communities and to draw inspiration? All my art is starting from my small sketchbook, and I have so many of that. I'm always sketching when I'm traveling. It is interesting also because through art, you are not visiting the city in the touristic spot. You are usually going in other direction. And it's really a way to discover a culture. And of course, most of the time, it's interesting to interpret the culture. I know, for example, when I was in Marrakech, and I painted like a lot of ladies on the street, they had their hair covered. But sometimes one of those will have some hair going out of the veil. At the beginning, they will be very happy. Like, for example, in the Marrakech, they will be like, Oh, you painted here. Now, can you come and paint the restaurant of my brother? And then painting more than once. And maybe the day after coming back and everything was deleted because maybe a religious person passed by and decided that that was shocking. So, of course, the culture is influencing me a lot, and I'm trying to get into the culture. But it's always my point of view. That is an artistic point of view from a woman coming from Italy. So, of course, my background is influencing me, too, most of the time in the way I work. But it's a really interesting way to travel and to get into the culture and to meet people and to get into the stories of people. I have many, many funny stories, crazy stories about my travel and because I saw the city from many different points of view and I've been in touch with many persons. And at the end, I also became friends with some of them and met them again. Or maybe I have a story of a person that in Barcelona, there is a group of people who are pasting back the photo of my paint where my paint has been cancelled. So, they actually paste back their own photo and their own souvenir of my work. So, this is interesting because it's not my work anymore, of course, but it's their souvenir. And I think street art, more than other kinds of art, there is this exchange with the people and, to me, make me feel more alive, make me feel I'm doing something more useful. What was the most challenging location where you came to research and there was a lot of unexpected things happened? What was them? For example, I've been invited in Singapore to paint with Italian Institute. So, I was doing something very institutional, but I really wanted to go in the street and paint something else. But, you know, Singapore is very, very dangerous. If they catch you painting illegally, it's a big problem. And so, I went out with a group of graffiti people and I say, I want to paint on this spot. And they tell me, yes, no problem. You go. No problem. In five seconds, I was starting to paint. They've been disappearing all around me. It was full of camera. But I don't know. So, for example, I painted in Australia and Melbourne. I was painting a big mural on the Museum of Immigration because there is a big community of Italian immigrants in Melbourne. And people would come, all people would come and tell me all the story of how they arrived there with the boats in the 50s. You know, that's happened to me in Brooklyn too. So, it's interesting because I work a lot with the immigrants arriving in Italy. So, when I get outside, at least the story of Italians, I understand, you know, the story is always repeating. And it's a way for me to discover a very personal geography of the world, I think. But, yes, I've been down in the underground in Paris or have been in Montevideo building. So, I've really been crossing the world through my art. It was, of course, not expected because someone would tell me when I was 15 that one day they would pay me to paint all around the world big walls. I would not believe it, of course. It's such an adventure in some sense, especially your story about Singapore, you know. You don't know what are the challenges, how is government treating street art. Here, very often you see in the newspapers, there are stories popping out saying, you know, this street artist's art was, like, covered with paint by council, you know, and people protested against it. I was wondering, how do you find it, generally, the government and different countries, how do they treat street art? Because, you know, there is a difference between vandalism and really beautiful works of art for the communities. I mean, it's very, very different from one country to another. Because, for example, in South America, it's something absolutely normal. You go, you paint on the street, people will bring you food and BFP and music. You know what I mean? It's just normal. In Italy, for example, there is a big schizophrenia about it. People, like, I've been working for important museums, for important institutions, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I'm on the Italian Encyclopedia, but at the same time I have a process, a panel process, you know, to paint without authorization. So, it's quite crazy, if you think about it. And I feel like in many countries, they didn't understand, they didn't, they like street art when they can use it to say they are doing re-qualification, you know? But most of the time, it's like everything, I think art, when they think it's art, they think art inside a frame. So, the frame might be the world they decide for you. The power of this kind of art is really about that at some moment, the artist decided to paint where they wanted, what they wanted. And so, I still think there is a big confusion about the instrument, that is, the sprite itself. So, if I'm in love, I would write, like in Rome, we are very, you know, romantic, so they write like, Laura, please come back with me, I love you so much. I'm a soccer supporter and I would write, you know, something about Totti and Roma. But also, there is a big history here in Italy about the freedom of expression. For example, all the, you know, what we call ex-voto, when they got the grace from the Madonna, they put like a thank you on the wall, or maybe there are, you know, people painting the Madonna on the floor. And all this is illegal. Like, so, I think the people are still afraid of what you can do with a spray can. And not thinking that it's depending on the person using the spray can. So, and also, before there were graffiti and they were just bad and ugly for the people. Then, after Banksy, maybe, and after what we call post-graffiti at the beginning of the 2000s, things changed. And we had this more figurative stuff. And I've been exploding in London. I remember the first time I saw Street Art Tour in London. I was like, wow, what is that? What is a Street Art Tour? You know what I mean? That was back in 2010. And so, it's like all the avant-garde movement. There is a moment they are breaking the rules of art. And then there is a moment they come back into the business. And that's always been the history of these kind of things. Do you think that the perception is changing? That, you know, as you said, in the beginning it was just ugly. And now it's, you know, we can see like beautiful works of art that are selling for thousands of pounds or which are appreciated by the local communities. So, do you think the perception is starting to change now? I think the community always understands when something is made with generosity for the city. You know? And understand when there is something made for eggless entries. They don't want to write my name very big on a wall. You know what I mean? I mean, I come from that culture. So, I can understand the process of a teenager and everything. But the community can't understand that. At the same time, on the other side, there is the market of art. But if you really think about, even if a bank thing is selling for so much, it still never will be the same price of contemporary art. You know, Damien Hirst is selling for much more than him. You know what I mean? So, the price are not the same. Also, the main point is how I can sell something if you are giving it for free. So, at the same time, if we think about Basquiat, a catering that are artists now. They are in museums. They had to renounce to their tag name on the street. In the case of Basquiat, he was tagging like Samo. He couldn't do it anymore because they needed to sell his painting. So, it's still not… I think street art is still outside of the box of art and it's very social and it's for the community. And this is the main thing, I think. Even for me, now my passion became my work. What I like to do is a social project. And I always work with the situation where I feel this art can bring a light on a situation. Also, I'm organizing a festival of street art in an abandoned place in Italy. It's one of the more forgotten reasons in a very little village. And through the art and through the artists I invited in this year, now this little village is coming back to life with some shops and people bought the houses. So, sometimes this kind of art can really change reality and maybe bring a tourist in a very forgotten district of a city. And this is the power of it, I think. And for you, artistically, is it different when you do something just independently, yourself, you choose where and what to paint and in comparison to when you cooperate with institutions, you said like with different Italian institutions, how different it is for you when you cooperate with someone? It's completely different for me. One thing is neural, you know. So, I would say that the little interventions I do are more poetic because I'm trying to do something nice in a place that is not nice at all. Usually, you know, a very forgotten corner of the city and very small and very democratic, I would say. If you like it, you can take a picture of it. If you don't like it, it's very easy to tell. While big walls, and I'm paid to do this and it's my work, so I'm paying against my interest. The big walls are more fascist, I would say. You will see it, you know, you open the window and you will see this big wall of five, four floors in front of you. And if you don't like it, it's a problem. So, that's why I feel this responsibility and I always try to speak with the people to understand if what I'm painting on a big wall is accepted in the culture, is interesting for them. So, this is how it's different to me. But I always, always start from the context, you know. I'm not painting just what I want to paint. I paint something that will stick in that place. One of the other questions that one of my readers has sent, how does one get into the street art, the journey? There is a documentary on your website, Filia del Mondo, and it kind of tells your journey. But I was curious to hear from your perspective as well. How did you, why did you choose street art exactly? So, in the morning I was going to the artistic high school and painting the model in a very traditional art room. And in the evening I would be with my friends because hip-hop culture was arriving a little late in Italy in respect of the rest of the world, maybe, in the 90s when I was a teenager. And this culture changed our lives because it was saying to us, you know, you don't need to go to the best dance school if you don't have the money to maybe study music or have an instrument. But what you need is just a cardboard on the floor and then to be yourself. And you'll need a friend who's doing beatbox and you need, you know, one disc and maybe somebody doing scratch. And nobody will teach you how to use the spray. And this culture for us was very interesting because we were really actually leaving the city and learning to be different from one another. That means that the more you find your style, your sign, the more you are unique. And this contrast in between the fine arts studies and the hip-hop culture brought me to the idea that I wanted to do something that was unique. And we were not knowing what we were doing because there was not even the term street art. There were no social media and nothing like that. But my teacher in the school would arrive every day and saying, you know, art is dead. We do shampoo. You have no future. Oh, thank you. So I was really looking for something that was in the contact with people. Also because in Italy, we have so much art that we consider all the underground culture. I'm talking from comics to illustration, not like art with a big A, but something secondary. That's why all our best illustrators are living in Paris. So for me to paint on walls was actually really a way to react to my teacher and to mix my academy studies with the culture of hip-hop. So for an artist, it's very important to find your own style, I think. So as soon as my sign became my signature, you know, you can recognize my work from the subject, the colors, and how they fit in the surrounding. And that was the more important thing for me. And so it's interesting the question that you had because it's one question I always got from the street. Old people would come to me and ask, oh, it's so nice. Why do you do it on the wall? Why don't you sell it? So I will tell you a story. One day I was in Madrid and I saw a beautiful wall. I liked it because it was full of stuff, very dirty, but very interesting for me for what I had in mind because I always use the background. I prefer very dirty walls to white walls, so I'm not interested in white walls, actually. And so I went, because it was in the center, it was in the daylight in front of a police office. I said, okay, let me ask. And I went inside. It was a wall of a bar. And I asked the man, can I paint something on your wall? You know, it's full of tags and things. So maybe you don't mind if I do something small in the middle of this mess? He watched me very worried and he said, graffiti? And I said, yeah, graffiti. But you know, here you have my book so you can see my stuff. So he watched my stuff and said, oh, that's nice. Okay, you can do it. So I paint. He comes, he likes it. And he goes like, oh, okay, can you do it inside now? So you know, inside will cost you a lot of money. That's what's for free. So most of the time, people think when you are good at doing something and you do it for free and for the community, you are such a stupid. You know, that's why he could ask me to do it inside for free. But that's the difference when you are doing something that you love and you want to share with other people, I think people understand. And that's why, I think the CT exam has been pushing me to go forward in this research. I hope you enjoyed listening to my interview with Alicja. And before we continue, I wanted to mention that I sent a monthly newsletter where I recommend books and art. I recommended Alicja's works in one of my newsletters, I think it was in June, and received a lot of messages back asking more about her. And that's how I decided to invite her as well to my podcast. So if you would like to join a community of people who are interested in this topic, please feel free to contact me. I will be happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And if you would like to join a community of book lovers, of art lovers, please consider joining. I will include the link to my newsletter below. And I'm really looking forward to meeting you on my newsletter. Thank you very much. And so let's continue. You mentioned that in Rome there is a division between this A-level art and the underground culture. And I wonder, do you think that it was more difficult for you to be, to do what you do by being in Rome and having these different classifications in the minds of people? Do you think this, I don't know, to call it conservatism, was a big obstacle for you or it played a maybe opposite role? Yes, I think so. But at the same time, I'm very classical in the way that I speak. I'm very classical in the way that I speak. I'm very classical in the way that I speak. I'm very classical in the way that I paint on the street. So in between this gap, you know, to paint something private and fragile and nice in a public space, that is all my research. So I think it's been something important for me. Yes, people will watch me strange also because I was a girl doing it. We had not so many girls at the time in the whole world painting. Not even now, but things are changing, you know. And this is happening also when I paint big walls and things like that. So I think it's been interesting to paint big walls and people will pass by and ask me, how you do that? And I do it with the list. You know, it's strange. It looks like strange. At the beginning, yes, nobody was used to it. And so when they were seeing me painting, they will come and see and watch and then when they realize it's not a sentence, it's not a tag, but it's something nice, they will be why you do it here. And that's why because we are used to think that's the thing. And the funny thing is that when people like my stuff on the street, my small intervention, what they do is to paint all around my painting and to do actually a frame and to me it makes no sense because I decided to paint on the wall because it was full of things, posters, and so it's funny. It's funny. Even in London, I saw people put some of their work on the plexiglass and I feel it's strange because I accept this art is ephemeral so it will disappear it will change with the city. Sometimes if you paint on a rusty door after a few years it's even more interesting than before you know because it's changing with the door itself. So I don't know one is my point of view and the other I think is the point of view of the people because the street is for everybody then you know I'm not right there I'm not right it's just like that. And you said that your style is very classical but also like the themes what you draw has a kind of common theme common message and I was wondering what kind of messages you are trying to convey by your style the classical style that you mentioned. I think that all my what I'm interested is the human feeling about you know things that make us similar in the world and by travelling the human feelings are always the same so are international and in a world where we have so much cynicism we have cynicism in art we have cynicism in advertising and all the feelings represented in the advertising in the city are so classical say you know then you see people are very happy or you know like women women are represented in Italy more than other countries maybe like a very good mom so what I'm interested are actually in between moments I studied animation too and I was very attracted from that moment that is in between the action you know what I mean so that feeling we can't talk about that is very difficult and I feel that even sometimes can be like obvious but we really need something more human and this is my message I think in general that there is something that we need we need to remember that even ugly district need some art and some human feelings to make us feel better and that's you know like a little fountain to every corner and make you feel better it's not fundamental but it's something make you really feel better and that's why Niedriga city and this kind of art is born in dormitory district you know where there is no sense of art and you choose I've noticed that you've choose like some very warm colors in certain depictions in certain ideas can you tell more about that most of the time this is more magic part of my work I feel because even for me surprising I don't know how to describe the feeling from the surrounding so most of the time maybe I see a little corner because there is this color of background inspire me for something but if you watch my painting there is this contrast between warm and cold color almost always do you draw inspiration from other types of art other than painting and drawing do you like music do you like cinema what is the second your second favorite type of music I was studying float I don't know the problem with that was I studied classical music and I was never studied before I was improvising in front of my teacher because I didn't have a music book so I'm very good at just repeating what I read but without the music book I didn't know how to play so to me it's very interesting I always like to collaborate with artists that are not in my field like a photographer I've been experimenting with 3D and I always like to collaborate with artists that are not in my field so I always like to collaborate with artists that are not in my field so I always like to collaborate with artists that are not in my field so I always like to collaborate with artists that are not in my field so I always like to collaborate with artists that are not in my field so I always like to collaborate with artists that are not in my field so I always like to collaborate with artists that are not in my field so I always like to collaborate with artists that are not in my field so I always 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