Street art has been
\nrecently gaining ground in cities across Romania. Extremely accessible though it
\nmay seem, street art is actually visible to the very few, that is to those who
\ncan notice it in their routine journeys. That is how an initiative promoting
\nstreet art has emerged, encouraging people to take a walk around the city, and
\nthat is what we shall be focusing on today, exploring a resourceful and colorful
\ninitiative.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Our guest is the
\norganizer of one of the alternative tours around the city, Valentin Dobrin. He
\ntold us such an idea crossed his mind in 2018, after a city break in Berlin,
\nsince Berlin is a hot sport of street art in Europe, but also around the world. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Valentin Dobrin:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I
\ntook part in alternative tour there, I liked the idea a lot and, when I came
\nback home, I wondered whether we too had something similar, as I knew that in
\nrecent years street art has been literally booming, with a growing number of
\nmurals being seen everywhere. I found out there were two such tours, yet they
\nwere tailored for the people who visited the city. I came up with the idea of
\ncreating a tour myself, which could be accessible to Bucharesters, and not only
\nto tourists. And that’s how it all started .<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
I am a Bucharester
\nmyself, and as soon as I learned that, I wondered whether I really knew what
\nthe city had in store for me, of whether other people knew that. I had my
\ndoubts, and my doubts were confirmed by our guest, Valentin Dobrin, who told us
\nthat usually, people don’t know what they pass by. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Valentin Dobrin:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Most
\nof them know only two or three such spots. They know a little bit about local
\nartists, they also know some of them, yet a great part of what I show had been
\nunbeknownst to them, and in the long run they are flabbergasted, saying they
\nhad passed by this or that spot a hundred times before but they never imagined
\nsuch a beauty existed behind this or that block of flats. The tour is available
\nin the city center of Bucharest. We depart from Revolution Square, we take a
\nwalk along Victoria Road for a little while, then we head towards Grivita Road
\nand from there, we take to Romana Square. It takes us about three and a half
\nhours to complete it.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The community of street
\nartists has begun to grow, just as Valentin Dobrin told us. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As for
\nthe artists, they hail from various milieus. Some of the kids who once did
\nGraffittis have grown into street artists, passing from Graffitti to street art
\nis something quite natural. In much the same way as some of the artists used to
\nbe comics artist, for instance, or as illustrators end up drawing murals. Latterly,
\nthe community has been growing, I believe we’re speaking about an organic and
\nvery beautiful progress of street art in Bucharest. Street art does not only
\nmean mural art, street art interventions can take the form of a sticker, decals
\nthat are stuck on pillars, traffic signs or paste-ups, or a drawing that the
\nartist had done at home beforehand and pasted on the street, in a hurry, but
\nthere are other kinds as well.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We’re on the borderline
\nseparating the legal from the illegal, since official consents are always
\nobtained for large-scale street interventions, but for the smaller ones, their
\nauthors simply skip the official phase. We <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Street art works do have a wide range of themes they explore.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Valentin Dobrin:<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
They
\nare extremely varied. They can be social, they can be political, it al depends
\non the experience and the feelings of each and every artist. Street art of any
\nkind, starting off from Graffittis, murals stickers and pasteups. There are
\nartists who even make ceramic figurines, also in public areas, they are not
\nquite visible, it is impossible to spot them unless somebody shows you where
\nthey are. Also, I am trying to puzzle people out, providing an answer to the
\neternal question, is it art or is it vandalism. Many people take the former for
\nthe latter, many people cannot tell Graffitti from street art and then I try to
\nmake things clear to that end as well. A Graffitti is something written on a
\nwall, or a drawing somebody made for advertising purposes. All they are interested
\nin is for their names to be somewhere on the wall so that the others may see
\nit. As for street art, it begs to differ, it is also an inscription or a drawing,
\nyet it has a message, according to the onlookers. When a drawing triggers a
\nreaction from the onlooker, from my point of view, that is street art.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We all want to take a
\nwalk around beautiful spots, so here’s the invitation Valentin Dobrin has
\nlaunched for us.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Provided some of the restrictions are no longer in place, the tours are held
\non Sundays, beginning 11 am, having the Revolution Square as the departure
\npoint. For further details on that, anyone can visit alternative-bucharest.com,
\nand, as a rule, the tours are available as long as we have beautiful weather.<\/p>\n
(Translation by Eugen Nasta)<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Street art in Bucharest invites you to take a walk around the city<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":136307,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42520],"tags":[43274,43272,43271,43270,43273],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-136306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inside-romania","tag-advertising","tag-drawing","tag-graffitti","tag-street-art","tag-tours"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n