the street is our gallery

September 01, 2018 to September 30, 2018

The Parees festival is defined and singled out for its participatory approach and dialogue with the environment in which it develops. In addition to contributing and expanding the public heritage with interventions of artistic value in medians and walls, the festival aims to have a positive impact on the coexistence and intends to boost the social and cultural life of the territory. This approach is translated into a program that, through different formulas, directly connects all the proposals with the social network. A unique festival of urban art connected to the environment.

The festival promotes contextualized, participatory and community murals. In the case of contextualized murals, artists develop their work based on detailed information and contacts with prominent agents of the space where they will intervene. For their part, the artists who make participatory murals are accompanied by local mediators who facilitate meetings with people and significant entities of the municipality. It is from this direct interaction, coordinated by Raposu Roxu, that a sketch is born in situ. In the community mural format, the neighbors experience the creative process in first person and help the artist develop it. This collective work turns the artist into an agent of change, it generates debate among the community and it promotes citizen empowerment in the public space.

Mural interventions with an artistic and social interest

Colectivo Licuado will open the second edition of the Parees festival with an intervention on the role of women in traditional culture and folklore of Asturias created from a participatory process. The couple of Uruguayan artists will work with the group Las pandereteras del Remediu, a collective of women activists who play the traditional Asturian tambourine and who, based on traditional rhythms, create protest and feminist songs that they perform at demonstrations, parties and other acts in the streets. The process also includes a debate session at La Llegra where, among others, the ‘FolkQueer’ project is developed.

Buildings are a reflection of the history of the cities and they help build the symbolic identity of their inhabitants. Aiming to recover and reclaim the collective memory and taking into account it is the Casino de Trubia’s 100th anniversary, Barcelonian Roc Blackblock will realize a work dedicated to this space, which has been a witness and the protagonist of the social life of this Asturian population.

Also related to the cultural history of the territory, we’ll find the work that Xav will perform in Tudela Veguín. From meetings with family and friends of Tino Casal, the Asturian tattoo and street artist will pay homage to the deceased singer, illustrious son of this village and a true icon of the ‘movida madrileña’.

Another of the distinguished interventions this year is that of Twee Muizen, winning artists of the Leopoldo Alas Clarín Contest that the Parees festival promoted in its first edition to renew the mural dedicated to this writer on a 16 x 5 meter wall in Santa Clara street in Oviedo. The piece ‘Clarín’ was created three decades ago by Florentino Flórez and this initiative responds to the will of the festival to recover and put in value the current muralist of the 80s.

Moreover, Italian Andrea Ravo Mattoni will develop in Oviedo one of his impressive canvases in open air, inspired by the paintings of the great masters of art history. This year, the Parees festival will also count on the universe of Alfalfa, artistic name of Venezuelan Nicolás Sánchez, who in his works explores fantasy as a refuge and rescues mythology and local legends.

Taquen is another of the names of the 2018 Parees festival. The draftsman and street artist, known for his large-format portraits, is currently working on a project that reflects on the migratory movement in which moving animals act as a metaphor for travel. The animals, in this case in the form of magical and mysterious beings, are also the protagonists of the pieces of the creator that completes the program this year: Portuguese illustrator and visual artist Kruella d’Enfer.

On Sunday, September 30th, the Oviedo mural intervention festival will culminate its program with free activities for different audiences. In the morning, and directed to a family audience, the Parees festival will organize again on this new edition ‘drift through the murals’, a bicycle route to discover, up close, some of the interventions made during the first and second edition of the festival. In the afternoon, children will be the protagonists: Lainopia Educación Artística will give an experimental graffiti workshop where the little ones will be able to get acquainted with the paint sprays and give free rein to their imagination. And, in the Yepayé games library, they will be able to explore their creativity through natural and recycled materials.