Sao Paulo street art debate over what makes cities livable
Sao Paulo street art debate over what makes cities livable
Sarah Dilorenzo, Associated Press Updated 12:47 pm, Friday, March 24, 2017
SAO PAULO (AP) When completed in 2015, the mayor's office hailed the graffiti panels along Avenida 23 de Maio as Latin America's largest open-air mural 70 works of street art stretching for more than 3 miles (5 kilometers) along a boulevard connecting a well-to-do district with the city center.
Then this January, they were painted over.
It wasn't done by vandals or other graffiti artists, as often happens with street art, but by sanitation workers acting on the orders of Sao Paulo's new mayor, Joao Doria, a millionaire businessman and former host of "The Apprentice Brazil." The mayor even donned a pair of orange coveralls and wielded a spray gun to put a thin layer of gray paint over the murals angering people who considered the paintings part of the city's cultural heritage and sparking a debate about what is art and what should be protected.
Removal of the murals was among the first acts of Doria's "Pretty City" campaign: a traveling circus of street cleaners and maintenance workers who install new trash cans, plant trees, pick up garbage and cover up graffiti around Sao Paulo every weekend. Doria says the goal is not just to clean up Sao Paulo but to restore Paulistanos' pride in their hometown.
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