00:00:26:10
CLAW$$: Graffiti, street art, public art, whatever you wanna call it, murals, I think it does affect the everyday person for the better.

LADY PINK: Street art is everywhere. It’s accessible by everyone, it’s do-able by everyone.

TOOFLY: It just encompasses us being artists, creating art on the street, and doing stuff either illegally, and if it’s with permission it’s still just being outdoors. And this work is just like for the general public.

CLAW$$: Graffiti can open someone up to finding their own voice, and sort of echo your own sentiment.

SWOON: Going wheat pasting –  you learn so much about a city when you do that by seeing how much other art is out there, how people respond to it. As an artist like what other movement has captured the imagination of people all over the entire world, and young people, and like, had people participating at this level. It kind of continues to blow my mind.

LADY PINK: Different countries use it differently. In some places they’re using it as heavy political propaganda against the injustice that their country is doing and they have to remain anonymous or they will be shot and killed. That is a whole different kind of graffiti vandalism taken to whole different levels.

IN 00:01:46:18
OUT 00:01:52:16
I’m not interested in making a distinction between women’s graffiti and men’s graffiti.

IN 00:01:53:12
OUT 00:01:56:12
I use my art to talk about the things that upset me.

CLAW$$: Graffiti is part of me but I am not only graffiti. It’s about feminism and making something from nothing.
 
CLAW$$: When you’re a female graffiti writer you have to work harder, you have to be tougher. You can’t fuck up. You can’t make a mistake, they’ll hold it against you forever.

MARTHA COOPER: When you’ve got like 100,000 guys writing graffiti and you’ve got 100 women writing graffiti, it’s always been kind of a guy thing.

SWOON: You almost have to really fight the lack of self-esteem that’s programmed into you since birth in order to generate a space for your own creative voice to be heard.

TITLE CARD
STREET HEROINES

TITLE CARD
NEW YORK CITY

TOOFLY: Checking out the rooftop, checking out the letters, checking out the tags. It was like this array of markings but there was no real, like figurative works. Maybe one or two old hip hop characters with graff letters.

But I was like you know, there’s no women, and so I was, this is my opportunity to like come out and be that female version of like what the guys were doing.

TOOFLY: You know, obviously I didn’t pursue the lettering route, I kinda just went with a character. And right away it was like a female character,

TITLE CARD
TOOFLY
QUEENS

the name TooFly, and it all just came together and people were like “who is that?”

TC 03:46
TOOFLY: I was born in Ecuador, I came to the States when I was about 7-years-old, back in ‘85.

TOOFLY: Growing up in Corona, Queens there was a good bunch of bombers, and you know, just street graff guys.

TOOFLY: From drawing on my sketchbooks it went on to drawing on the tables, the Fashion tables, the locker room, like the walls. The next thing you know I was tagging up on mailboxes on my way home. Going out in my neighborhood late at night tagging up in my neighborhood. Pretty much just being like a rebel kid, graffitiing and kinda like destroying property.  

TOOFLY: All those experiences, make you, turn you into whatever person you’re going to be. Whether you’re going to be an artist, or you’re just gonna have a job or whatever, you still live that experience and feels really good and no one can take that away from you.

TOOFLY: When I was a teen I would walk all the way home which is 102nd Street. All these streets were like tagged up. We would go this way, that way, all these corners, and it would be like how we hanged out, you know. Hanged out, walked around, tagged up. And that was pretty much all we did.

TOOFLY: And I guess when we used to go to Flushing there was parts where I actually did my first outlines and went inside some kind of trashy places where they crushed cars. Got chased by dogs, cut my hand. Like this whole situation just to kind of like do a big character that you could see from the train, from the 7 line.

TOOFLY: There was this rooftop across the street from Fashion that I snuck in with my mom, again like around 3, 4, in the morning. We like trespassed, and I got to do like my first full color character that you could see from like the 6th, 7th floor in high school.

TOOFLY: And she was right there like being my lookout, making sure nobody was coming up the building, and holding my cans and all of that. So yeah, my mom was like a really good example of someone that supports you, even though you’re doing something illegal! And we both could have gone to gail or whatever if we got caught!

TOFLY: Eventually when 5 Pointz came and around I was able to paint, you know, with permission, I didn’t have to worry about the cops. And so it helped me not being out on the street doing illegal stuff, which I didn’t really want to do. I really wanted to just take my time and paint a piece.  

LEXI BELLA: Street artists stem from graffiti artists and graffiti started in New York City and it came from the need to, of the youth, to express themselves when they had no other outlet. So instead of resulting to violence - or real actual crime, not painting on walls - they started just working on what they had. And I think that that’s a need that every youth has everywhere and especially when you’re crammed into a city and you don’t know what else to do and you’re surrounded by walls, the need to express yourself on them, that just comes naturally.

LEXI BELLA: I mean, 70-thousand years ago people were painting on the caves of Lascaux and we still wanna do it. So it just comes from that real base inner desire to create. And so New York, because there’s so many people and it draws artists from all over the world and it’s an art center, to be part of that and then to want to do your work as big as possible so millions of people can see it, it’s a perfect storm for street art and graffiti.

TOOFLY: When I was maybe 15, my younger cousin got a hold of Subway Art, and I still have that book, it’s already like so old.

TOOFLY:  I started to see the photos of the artists and obviously the one I was drawn to or stuck out was Lady Pink. You know you get a book that says SubwayArt and you’re like “whoah, what’s this? Like New York was like full of graffiti and trains?”

I didn’t grow up around the classic ’80’s stuff that was happening so this book came into my life and I was like putting two and two together and then I see Lady Pink and all her paint.

LADY PINK: Contrary to popular belief, I’m really not the first girl graffiti writer. There was like dozens and dozens and dozens of women through the 1970s who painted graffiti in New York City. What they didn’t do was massive whole cars, top-to-bottom pieces, or you know any amount of artwork on the outside of trains. What they did do was a lot of tagging, they did bombing, they got up. They were hearty, hearty ladies that did a lot of graffiti.

LADY PINK: I came in at the end of the 1970s when they, most of them, had already stopped and quit and moved on with life and grown up.

LADY PINK: I got my start as a graffiti writer when my very first boyfriend was arrested for graffiti, a boyfriend I had from the ages of 13 to 15. He was nabbed for tagging in the streets and his family sent him to go live in Puerto Rico. So that was it. He was gone, I was mourning his loss, he couldn’t come back, he was only 15.

LADY PINK: I cried for a month and started tagging his name around the junior high school. And I took up with his friends and learned how to do style. But it wasn’t until I went to high school and got the chance to actually paint some trains with these kids in the Bronx and Brooklyn, and in different places. Not in my own neighborhood, there was no place in Queens for me to paint. I had to go to the ghetto, and that was exciting in itself, hiding in a dark alley in the ghetto for two hours under a bush. Oooh, there’s nothing more fun than that!

MARTHA COOPER: You know, when I first started shooting graffiti way back in the late ’70s, Lady Pink was the only female artist that I knew.

LADY PINK: Even as a teenager I would hear like little 12-year-old boys say to me that “you can’t paint the subway train because you’re a girl!” So I think it was in me to prove that as petite as I was and as female as I was that I could do whatever men could do.

MARTHA COOPER: Even though I had heard of others, there were others before Pink, but nobody who was doing as much work as she was and nobody who was writing on trains the way Lady Pink was.

LADY PINK: Martha Cooper, the renowned legendary photographer of graffiti, and Henry Chalfant, were both around the graffiti movement from the early ’80’s, they were just part of the scene. I can’t even remember exactly when I met Martha Cooper. As a teenager she was just always at the events, at the parties. She’d come to my house, my mother’s house.

MARTHA COOPER: I went to her house, I saw her cans of paint she collected. She - one of her things was that she used light, female colors, you know, that she considered like pinks. She had like a whole stack of cans on shelves that her father had built for her. All of that left an indelible impression on me in the ’70’s we’re at the height of like feminism, and she invited me to go to the yards with her.

LADY PINK: You have to know where to go, how to get there, sneak in. The train yards would have holes in the fences and routes to get in and ways to climb in, you couldn’t just walk in the front entrance or anything like that. Although I hear in the 1970’s some of those guys would bribe the guards with liquor and hookers and stuff like that to keep them shut for a few hours while they did their thing. That’s, that, that works too - bribery. But sneaking in, moving like a ninja, climbing fences with a huge heavy bag full of paint and doing your thing, that’s the way we mostly got in.

LADY PINK: All the graffiti writers would own certain train yards, they got very territorial. Some were groups with, you know, with sticks and knives and guns and they protected their territory from outsiders, and any amateurs, any toys that were coming in and making their spots hot.

LADY PINK: So you can’t just be wandering into anybody’s territory. You gotta know people, the right way to go in, when to go in, so that no incidents - getting arrested, people beating you down and taking your stuff and such. Or your work not surviving. If you did it in the wrong place someone’s going to go over you because you don’t belong there and you’re a nobody.
 
MARTHA COOPER: Without the photo you had no proof, because the train might not even run more than once or one day. It could get painted over by somebody else, it could be buffed by transit, the train could be pulled out of service.

LADY PINK: This photo of one of the last subway trains I painted, when I first met my husband, they pulled our trains out and he snuck into the Coney Island train yard to take this photo. He was dressed with a little orange vest pretending to be one of the track workers, with a bag full of cameras, and he took a video of this as well.

LADY PINK: Their pieces on the train were already puddles on the ground, they had cleaned them up, they were gone. But mine was still one last remaining P-I-N… He photographed this and I thought that was the most romantic thing ever! He risked himself so much and Coney Island train yard is the biggest train yard in New York with the highest security and how he just walked in there and took these photos. I don’t know, that takes a different kind of crazy.

MARTHA COOPER: Always they were trying to get pictures and, I mean, Dondi even told me that he didn’t want to paint a piece unless he had a camera but the camera that he had was a cardboard camera that they usually would “rack” from some, not a camera store but more like a drug store would have those little cardboard cameras.

MARTHA COOPER: I immediately started giving back photos of the pieces so of course that was really desirable. They wanted my photos which were from my Nikon camera.

LADY PINK: Every country and every place that we go Martha is there and she has faithfully photographed us and documented the graffiti movement and the street art movement for well over 35 years. What we do needs to be documented because what we do is an experience in place and time, whether it’s legal or not.

LADY PINK: I publish pictures of, and luckily Lady Pink allowed me to publish pictures of, her doing some slightly illegal or maybe some massively illegal things, in both Subway Art and Hip Hop Files. But I first met TooFly through Lady Pink.     

LADY PINK: I think the first time I saw TooFly was at the Graffiti Hall of Fame. I painted there one year and it was just myself and all guys, I was the only female. And then one year I hear that TooFly will be painting there.

LADY PINK: I was stunned. So I wanted to meet her and saw that she could really, really paint well.

TOOFLY: When 2002 came around, when it was really like the first time that I became public, she’s actually the one that came up to me and introduced herself.

LADY PINK: And of all things she was from Ecuador, she was from my very same country and you know I don’t meet too many female painters so I was thrilled. And I take it upon myself to mentor and encourage and give opportunities to any of these females.

TOOFLY: She’s kinda been like our mom, like our graffiti mom. She started to get us together and then stuff happened. She kinda stepped away from and it and then we kinda took the reigns and started to organize ourselves.

LADY PINK: We’ve become - it’s kind of an informal sisterhood. We help each other, support each other, anything that we can possibly do to help out.

TOOFLY:  She’s always been like super hard core, she’s an old school New Yorker, she’ll tell you like it is and you just gotta listen.

LADY PINK: Although some of the diehard purists in New York City were against her because she didn’t really, what they call, “pay her dues”. She didn’t run around vandalizing anything. She could only paint very pretty and that became kind of the mark for a new breed of artist we call that the hip hop artist.

LADY PINK: They like the style, the excel at the medium, they can use spray paint really well but they do not break the law and they’re not afraid to admit it either.

TOOFLY: You know in the ’90’s we grew up the hip hop golden era.  Hip hop was y’know style, and it was like real authentic lyricism y’know in the rap music. We were all creating at the same time, y’know, wearing hoodie, jeans, jewelry. Y’know, the way we spoke, our lingo. And so I feel like the stuff that I was creating, ‘cause I was growing up as a young woman trying to figure out y’know what kind of person I’m gonna be, my whole characters were like B-Girls and hip hop girls, and they just kind of embodied the energy of the time.       

SHIRO: I saw the movie Wild Style and thought, wow, it’s so cool! That was about New York graffiti. Before that, before I saw the movie, I really wanted to learn English and I wanted to move to the States.

Then I started to do graffiti and was like, oh my god, I have to move to New York.  I really appreciate TooFly because she just opened my door. I kept going to graffiti class which Sen2 was doing at Hunts Point.

SHIRO: And one day I got the flyer. The flyer was for a women’s hip hop event. And on the flyer I saw like women, “female writers wanted”. I was like, oh my god, that’s cool. But at the time I didn’t speak not much English. But there was a phone number so I was thinking and when I finally made the phone call and TooFly picked up and so I send her my image.  And so she picked me up to paint together, me and TooFly and ACB who passed away in 2006. So we three painted together. So they were my first friends in New York.

TOOFLY: The guys were always ten steps ahead of us and so when they did their exhibitions they would invite some of the girls but then give her like the shitty wall, or the shitty spot. And I was like, I’m not down with that, let’s just get together and do our own show.

And so now it was like ok well let me call this girl, let me call this girl, let me call this girl. And then like she does letters, she does characters, she’s in town. And then so after six women painting on this wall we were like so excited and everybody’s response is so great, and then it’s like ok well where’s the other festival happening at?

TOOFLY: And then we realize, Martha Cooper’s taking our photo and she’s the one that did the Subway Art book, and then you’re like, oh shit! Then it clicks and you’re like, I’m part of a bigger thing here.

CLAW$$: Graffiti was sort of the first opportunity I gave myself to excel and sort of prove things to myself, that I wasn’t really pushing myself academically. You know, really to see what I could do, what I had stamina to handle. I’m gonna say I tagged up in the late ’80’s but I didn’t really get up until the like early ’90’s.

It’s almost like a dream like, was that my life? Did that happen, or was that a movie? Like, it’s strange to think of some of the things that I did, from you know climbing the Manhattan Bridge and scaling the entire bridge on a tiny metal plank, to climbing up rooftops and not knowing how I was gonna get down, to painting in terrible neighborhoods and you know literally having to like fight some dude off me, and like spray him in the face. Spray paint is a very, very good weapon.  

CLAW$$: When I stopped writing graffiti and I met a young Miss17, I was hearing so much, like, crap because she was like, a woman. And I was like, you know what, let’s hear them say this about me. And I’m gonna paint with this, um, wonderful young lady. And you know, like, I really owe her a lot because I think that after I started painting there started to be like all this interest in Claw. Because it was so public people were like, oh damn, these two girls are like, crushing.

CLAW$$: I would say that was like the highlight of my graffiti career, to like, paint with another woman, to show like, pussy power in like full force, we’re just two writers out here. But it was more than that.

DANIELLE MASTRION: I started realizing every time I was painting a wall, number one, I would get hollered at, like incessantly, like the level of street harassment is really distracting when you’re trying to paint, and you’re like, I’m just trying to paint. I’m not trying to talk to you or like, give you my phone number.

DANIELLE MASTRION: But also like, “hey, yo, ma! Who did that? Who’s your boyfriend?” Or - and I’m like, you just stood there for 20 minutes watching me paint. You watched me paint and you’re still gonna sit there and ask me who did that, ’cause you can’t wrap your mind around the fact that I did that.

ALICE MIZRACHI: There are great women artists who are women and there are great men artists who are men. It doesn’t matter. Great doesn’t - it’s not defined by gender, or by race, or by class, it’s just great. Unfortunately, not everyone is interested in making art that is for the greater good. It’s like, I don’t wanna be part of that misogynistic system. The art world, not just the street art or graff - and it’s not just the art world, I think it’s a lot of careers - are focused more on giving more opportunities to men than women.

LADY PINK: Sometimes there’s just straight out hostility that there’s a woman present. We can’t have that, you know, what, is the ship gonna go down because there’s a woman present? “You can’t climb that ladder because you’re a girl!” Like, what? You need a penis to climb a ladder? Does it help you hold on?

ANN LEWIS/GILF!: Graffiti’s been a guys game from the beginning. But everything has, you know. I mean, no matter what industry you’re in men are dominating, and that’s just the way things have been. You know, I think it’s changing rapidly.

ELLE: I know a lot of graff guys who haven’t hit the streets as hard as I had. At one point I was really, really, really crushing graffiti-wise. I painted billboards on the BQE and climbed up these crazy, crazy, crazy tall ladders and climbed on top of a lot of buildings and did a lot of roll-downs and I was really hitting it, pretty tough. And I was never invited to be in any crews, or invited out to paint with the dudes very often. And I don’t know if I would have been as a dude, it’s hard to say.

DANIELLE MASTRION: The first woman that I ever saw was Swoon, and that was when she was doing her stuff in Brooklyn like 15 years ago. And it was the first time I was like, that’s graffiti! And I was like, no it’s not.

ELLE: I was walking through Chelsea and saw these wheatpastes by Swoon and Gaia and I was really struck by them and I thought it was a huge gift to whoever was walking by.

DANIELLE MASTRION: And I was like - but it’s graffiti, but it’s not. I couldn’t wrap my head around what she was putting on the wall. That it wasn’t graffiti, and letters! Silver, black, and white! You know, like - that’s my graffiti voice apparently. And then like, and then I found out it was a girl I was like of course, leave it to a girl to put something beautiful up.

SWOON: When I originally started out I was just making little tiny stickers. And then I started making billboards and I was doing like news boxes and subway ads. So actually the point of getting to the wheatpaste portraits was a little bit of a long pathway. For me, I had grown up painting with oil paints on canvas, very traditional, very - You know, I grew up really before the internet, so my entire concept of what art could even be was incredibly, incredibly limited.

SWOON: When I landed in New York City and started looking around me, and I was like, wait, all of the stuff that I grew up looking at, you know even like Robert Rauschenberg, like this kind of beautiful layered collaged aesthetic, when I would look at the city streets I was like “oh, that didn’t come from nowhere, that came from here.”  Like, this is like kind of an embodiment of New York City and so it really got me looking at the streets and got me saying like “oh, maybe it’s more interesting to me to participate in the collage directly rather than to make an imitation of a collage”, for example.    

SWOON: There were these elements of like using the city, creating temporary work and like making something that was part of the actual fabric of the city that felt super dynamic for me. Where I just - I had just gotten to New York and I was like in love with it, I was obsessed with it. And so I just wanted to make something that didn’t just pay homage to it but participated directly with the city.  

LADY AIKO: My name is Aiko, I was born and raised in Tokyo, and I moved to New York in 1997.  New York is like central for anything, everything and I heard that there were a lot of different people doing great stuff. So I just wanted to come see, and hopefully I can find something I can do and I can be.

When I saw for the first time the Houston Bowery wall it was the creation of Keith Haring. I was really wondering, like – you know, in the beginning, first three years, only guy artists are painting the wall. And I felt like, why not women, you know? But now it’s changing. I think they understand.

Like, they started to give the opportunity to women, which is amazing, you know.  

LAY AIKO: So I think that piece was my first piece that I felt strongly like, this is a female wall, done by only a female. Also, I was the first Asian artist, so for me it’s a double meaning, you know. Like, I didn’t see any Asians who painted walls like me at the time. So I felt like this was really, really important.

TOOFLY: You have to be aware, especially if you’re taking on this idea of really being an artist. You don’t come from wealthy families, you know, you come from working on gigs and putting money aside for your paint. Or not treating your art as a hobby, like you are investing in yourself, you are investing in your art form and at some point you’re gonna be able to leave side jobs and make art more of your full-time job.

TOOFLY: And I didn’t know how I was gonna do it. I just knew I’m an artist, this is my life, I love to do it. I could never leave it. And it’s never a hobby for me, like, I never felt like this is a hobby. I was like, this is my life. But, I live in New York City, it’s an expensive city and things are changing and so I have to have a 9 to 5. It’s kinda like, how can I continue to do what I love, but I have to leave my beloved city because it’s now or never. I’m 35 and I want to be able to live a full-time artist’s life and it’s impossible in New York.

TOOFLY: You know, it just got to that point and I was like Ecuador would help me become a full-time artist.

TITLE CARD
QUITO
ECUADOR

TOOFLY: So I go and I take a break and I love it, you know. I find a really nice place to live there and so, I decide to stay. And now I’m back in Ecuador where it’s just starting. So I already have the experience, I’m sharing it over there, I’m coming back and forth organizing and producing an event that’s called the Warmi Paint Festival. And it’s the first all women arts and culture celebration that happened in the country. That kind of stuff doesn’t really exist there.

IN 00:30:11:10
OUT 00:30:16:20
Thank you, everyone, we’re so happy to kick off Warmi Paint!

IN 00:30:18:50
OUT 00:30:20:00
When was the last time you painted a train?  

IN 00:30:20:03
OUT 00:30:23:07
The last time was in ’94.

TOOFLY: We were able to receive a grant to bring artists like Lady Pink and Martha Cooper. The idea really was to continue to put street art and graffiti on a map because Ecuador doesn’t still think that graffiti could be at that level. There’s not a lot of museums for art. There’s not a lot of opportunities for women to become professional artists or designers. It’s just not looked at as a career, it’s looked down upon.

IN 00:30:50:30
OUT 00:30:53:15
Ok, we’re here in Quito with Panmela from –

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OUT 00:30:56:11
Panmela Castro, from Brazil

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OUT 00:30:58:11
We’re here with Catalina Bobone from –

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OUT 00:31:00:10
From Colombia

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OUT 00:31:04:07
And my name is Carla Quispe, I’m from Lima, Peru.

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OUT 00:31:10:55
My name is Vero Rivera, I’m from Carolina, Puerto Rico and I’m here in Quito, Ecuador participating in the Warmi Paint Festival.

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OUT 00:31:12:22
We are Abusa Crew

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OUT 00:31:14:02
And we’re from Chile.

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OUT 00:31:16:02
I’m BLN Bike from Quito.

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OUT 00:31:18:15
I’m Lili Cuca and I come from Colombia.

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OUT 00:31:21:21
I’m Vera, I’m from Ecuador.

IN 00:31:22:23
OUT 00:31:24:09
My name is Fio Silva, I’m from Argentina.

LADY PINK: It was rather interesting to be back in my homeland, I haven’t been there in over ten years. And it still looked the same except that now it was just covered in graffiti and tags everywhere. And I saw nice legal walls that were starting to look a little shabby because I understand the laws have changed and they can’t paint legal walls anymore, that’s unfortunate.

LADY PINK: And you know, overall I love my country but the laws and the government are just flawed. They’re backwards and they’re –they just take advantage of the poor and the helpless. And artists have been traditionally pioneers in all kinds of places and to be cut short like this, it’s bad for women, still second-class citizens. And there’s quite a struggle for them, and again, I don’t envy that, they’re like you know, maybe how America was back 50 years ago, or 80 years ago or something, and it’s just kind of sad.

LADY PINK: But I did have fun despite all that. I enjoyed myself, I loved meeting all these other artists, ladies, from Latin America. And historically I’d been the only one that was painting for many decades and then now there’s a whole lotta other sisters to play with.

TOOFLY: Creating this Warmi Paint Festival was a great opportunity because at that point we felt that we could raise awareness and educate more of the country’s people to know that graffiti and street art is a very beautiful art form, that they should respect it.

TOOFLY: It makes them twice, it makes them think like, oh maybe graffiti is not vandalism. Maybe graffiti is something else, let’s go learn what it’s all about.  

TOOFLY: If you don’t start showing people that these are respected graffiti artists and start paying them, you know, people are gonna think, oh everybody does it for free, it doesn’t matter, you know it’s not valued as much. But no, we paid everyone and even our folks that came to do conferences. You know it was very professional, basically, is what I’m trying to get at.

VERA PRIMAVERA:
IN 00:33:33:05
OUT 00:33:43:02
I started painting women because I feel like the majority of images of women we typically see are either created to sell something,

IN 00:33:43:04
OUT
or they’re society’s version of what a woman should be.

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OUT 00:33:52:09
And there is very little imagery in the streets of women by women.
                    
VERO RIVERA:
IN 00:33:53:01
OUT 00:33:57:21
Well, I do understand that it’s super important that women get out into the streets to do their work

IN 00:33:58:10
OUT 00:34:04:17
and prove that they are capable of such physical work. And not only for that reason, but to send a message.
    

TC 34:06
PANMELA CASTRO:
IN 00:34:05:05
OUT 00:34:10:07
The goal of my work is to present the female body in dialogue with the city.

IN 00:34:11:17
OUT 00:34:20:14
I am a feminist so my work is deeply rooted in issues of gender and always speaks about women’s rights.

FIO SILVA:
IN 00:34:21:02
OUT 00:34:30:12
This festival experience has been great because at the beginning I really questioned this idea of ‘women only’.

IN 00:34:31:21
OUT 00:34:37:11
I felt like it would be another form of separation.

IN 00:34:38:17
OUT 00:34:42:02
But it was so nice to connect with so many girls who have such interesting ideas,

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OUT 00:34:45:11
each with their own story, each from a different country.

IN 00:34:46:30
00:34:49:12
I feel like this experience opened my mind to this idea

IN 00:34:49:23
OUT 00:34:54:14
and changed my thinking about women in relation to the street.

IN 00:34:56:05
OUT 00:35:00:07
Not only in art, but in public life in general.

MARTHA COOPER: I’ve known TooFly for a long time, I think she’s just an amazing, wonderful, organized woman. And I think it’s just great that she managed to come to a country that actually hasn’t had that many street art events and organize such a big event, it’s so complicated to get the walls, get the paint, get the sponsorship, organize all the flights.

MATHA COOPER: One of the things that I like is meeting a lot of artists that I’d never heard of before, very good artists. And seeing their work, and the camaraderie, I think because there were so many Latin American artists – I don’t speak Spanish, they speak Spanish – but there was an instant rapport. It was just a very warm festival. Warmi, it’s a very warmi-warm festival!  

TOOFLY: I think giving back, it makes everything come full circle. Graffiti, even though people look at it as an illegal thing, whatever these graffiti writers were tagging up on the walls inspired me to get in it. And then now I’ve been able to create this big world around it and now I’m giving back. And I’m sure there was plenty of other girls that were my age, how I was back then, looking at my work and maybe wanting to be something like I am but to the next level. And so it kinda just keeps going and going and going.

TITLE CARD
MEXICO CITY

IN 00:37:02:22
OUT 00:37:09:02
FUSCA: Mexico has a long tradition in graphic arts, in painting, and in muralism.


TITLE CARD
FUSCA
MEXICO CITY

FUSCA: IN  00:37:10:14
OUT 00:37:13:23
There’s an obsession with showing that part of our culture,

IN 00:37:14:00
OUT 00:37:17:15
and each of those mediums has its own place.

IN  00:37:18:05
OUT 00:37:26:02
Mexico is bursting with expression, There’s a necessity to express everything.

IN  00:37:26:12
OUT 00:37:33:22
That expression can be channeled through governmental structures

IN 00:37:33:50
OUT 00:37:40:23
like museums, or privately in a gallery, or as graffiti in the streets.

IN  00:37:41:09
OUT 00:37:49:00
This historic obsession for cultural and artistic expression has always been very palpable.

FUSCA:
IN 00:37:59:05
OUT 00:38:09:07
I find it interesting to see an advertisement next to graffiti, a super nice house next to a house that’s falling apart.

IN 00:38:10:02
OUT 00:38:14:01
That juxtaposition is the graffiti of the city.

FUSCA:
IN 00:38:18:10
OUT 00:38:25:09
To me, the street is really important because it’s the place where everyone comes together.

IN 00:38:25:20
OUT 00:38:27:02
It’s public.

IN 00:38:27:05
OUT 00:38:32:02
Everything happens fast. People move fast, things happen fast.

IN 00:38:33:00
OUT 00:38:38:11
In the street everything is speed. It’s like a server, everything’s there.

IN 00:38:38:20
OUT 00:38:44:15
So if you don’t act fast, if you think too much, if you fail to use your intuition about what’s happening in the street,

IN 00:38:46:07
OUT 00:38:48:12
the street spits you out.  
   
FUSCA:
IN 00:38:58:55
OUT 00:39:04:03
Seeing a woman painting in the streets is no longer considered rare.

IN 00:39:04:21
OUT 00:39:09:07
When I started painting there had already been women painting in the streets.

IN 00:39:09:23
OUT 00:39:15:05
Not many, there were never many, but it wasn’t strange to find a woman painting in the streets.

IN 00:39:16:15
OUT 00:39:20:08
So my experiences are more neutral in that regard.

IN 00:39:20:14
OUT 00:39:28:00
I didn’t live through the same violence that women who started painting before me did.  

FUSCA:
IN 00:39:31:08
OUT 00:39:45:16
I’ve thought a lot about that and for me it’s been about learning to project more neutrality in regard to being a woman or a man,

IN 00:39:46:11
OUT 00:39:49:03
and because of that my experiences have been more peaceful.

IN 00:39:49:23
OUT 00:39:57:17
For instance, if I project overt femininity in the way that I dress or speak,

IN 00:39:58:10
OUT 00:40:03:06
I will elicit a very masculine response. And I don’t want that experience.

IN 00:40:04:05
OUT 00:40:10:08
And vice versa. If I express myself in a very masculine way, I’m going to experience a whole other type of violence.

IN 00:40:12:09
OUT 00:40:20:05
It’s like the masculine side likes to attack the public space and the feminine side likes to take time to make something beautiful.  

IN 00:40:21:23
OUT 00:40:30:19
So I actually make an effort to express my feminine side and my masculine side in equal proportion.
   
FUSCA:
IN 00:40:36:05
OUT 00:40:42:19
Painting in the streets is a phase for me. I don’t think I’ll be doing it forever.

IN 00:40:43:10
OUT 00:40:47:03
Today street art and graffiti are very trendy.

IN 00:40:47:15
OUT 00:40:58:11
Governmental organizations and brands are realizing the power street artists have in conveying messages to the public.

FUSCA:
IN 00:41:02:10
OUT 00:41:11:12
When I was starting out I thought this was great because I had the opportunity to paint huge buildings with a lot of production value.

IN 00:41:14:00
OUT 00:41:20:00
But I eventually realized what was behind it all. People making a lot of money from your work while you get nothing in return.

FUSCA:
IN 00:41:24:15
OUT 00:41:31:18
Early this year, heavy-hearted and almost like starting over again,

IN 00:41:32:05
OUT 00:41:39:21
I decided to break away from galleries and turn down work funded by private corporations and government sponsorships. Little by little all of that has faded away.

IN 00:41:41:22
OUT 00:41:55:15
I decided to shift directions at the end of last year because I realized that my whole career was based on these false promises. Financially I was at a loss because I worked so much and was never paid fairly.

IN 00:41:56:14
OUT 00:42:04:23
They try to convince you by saying that it’s a great opportunity for your art to gain more exposure. But obviously, it’s all a lie.
                    
FUSCA:
IN 00:42:20:06
OUT 00:42:25:04
I came here to Malinalco, just two hours outside of Mexico City,

IN 00:42:25:20
OUT 00:42:32:00
but a world away from the city and the whole street art scene.

IN 00:42:33:13
OUT 00:42:41:00
I got a group of friends together and we started to paint in small towns and communities around here.

IN 00:42:41:21
OUT 00:42:46:20
And it’s been really beautiful because I’m doing the same thing as before but with another purpose.

TYSA:
IN 00:43:02:14
OUT 00:43:07:02
When I realized that graffiti was a worldwide thing, I was amazed.

IN 00:43:07:21
OUT 00:43:09:10
I realized that we were not alone.

IN 00:43:10:03
OUT 00:43:16:09
While I’m heading out to paint here there’s someone in another country fighting the same fight to do what they love.
 
TYSA:
IN 00:43:24:03
OUT 00:43:27:22
Fusca and I met in Querétaro at an event called Board Dripper.

IN 00:43:28:20
OUT 00:43:32:11
They invited us both to paint and we ended up sharing a room there.

IN 00:43:33:09
OUT 00:43:40:12
I helped her finish her mural there. And it was cool because Fusca and I have a lot of things in common.

IN 00:43:40:35
OUT 00:43:44:14
We studied at the same places, she’s just a generation older than me.

IN 00:43:45:04
OUT 00:43:51:04
It was awesome for me to see that there are other girls painting with such dedication, like Fusca.

FUSCA:
IN 00:44:06:10
OUT 00:44:11:21
The work I’ve done here in Malinalco has completely changed my approach, and my identity as Fusca.

IN 00:44:15:06
OUT 00:44:22:12
Here there is no direct benefit to any government or any brand, or the ego of any artist.

IN 00:44:24:10
OUT 00:44:27:30
That’s why I don’t show my face.  Because it’s not about me.

IN 00:44:30:05
OUT 00:44:35:01
The work is just really focused on creating something by and for the community.

IN 00:44:37:02
OUT 00:44:43:01
We are many people here. It’s not Fusca. It’s everyone.

FUSCA:
IN 00:44:58:00
OUT 00:45:06:19
I notice how excited people get when they see me painting in the street, especially little boys and girls, like ‘wow, I can do that too.’

IN 00:45:10:19
OUT 00:45:16:13
It’s a different experience to see a man painting because it’s so common to see men working in the streets.

FUSCA:
IN 00:45:18:06
OUT 00:45:28:05
But when a little girl walks by and sees me painting it’s as if she sees herself totally capable of doing the same.

IN 00:45:29:17
OUT 00:45:36:00
Climbing a scaffold, dressed like a guy, sneakers, baseball cap.

IN 00:45:39:05
OUT 00:45:48:23
It’s a shock for them, wearing dresses, with their dolls, it’s totally outside of their realm of femininity.

FUSCA:
IN 00:45:53:00
OUT 00:46:01:05
That’s what I really like. Offering a different perspective of what’s possible, going beyond our concept of what it means to be a woman, or a person.

TITLE CARD
SÃO PAULO


MAGRELA:
IN 00:46:33:16
OUT 00:46:39:17
So, when I go out looking for a wall, I don’t like to ask permission, I just like to find a good wall.

MAGRELA:
N 00:46:43:21
OUT 00:46:53:08
I like walls that are dirty and grimy, those are my favorites.

IN 00:46:54:00
OUT 00:46:57:12
And, obviously walls that don’t have any pichação or anyone else’s work. That’s the rule here in São Paulo.

IN 00:46:58:10
OUT 00:47:01:06
We don’t paint over pichação or anyone else’s work.

IN 00:47:03:04
OUT 00:47:08:02
I like pichação more because it really represents São Paulo.

IN 00:47:08:16
OUT 00:41:15:16
Super straight, hard, stiff typography, you know, like super linear.

MAGRELA: IN 00:47:27:16
OUT 00:47:30:05
When I first started painting I did that one over there.

IN 00:47:34:14
OUT 00:47:40:20
He was more orange when I painted him. Ramires, he looks like my brother. Super old school!

MAGRELA:
IN 00:47:48:13
OUT 00:47:51:07
I learned to paint with my dad, he painted with me on his lap.

IN 00:47:54:01
OUT 00:48:02:15
My dad really brought me into this universe of Bahia where he grew up. He introduced me to his world through music and poetry, with his paintings.

IN 00:48:04:22
OUT 00:48:09:17
So I use colors from Bahia, as he was always referring to his childhood there.

IN 00:48:10:12
OUT 00:48:19:02
I think we have a lot to compensate for in terms of color here in São Paulo. Because the city is so grey.

IN 00:48:19:15
OUT 00:48:29:17
There’s a lot of ‘don’t touch me, don’t do this, don’t do that’. The streets are dangerous, don’t let your kids out in the street’. There are gates, walls, fear, everywhere.

IN 00:48:34:05
OUT 00:48:41:11
So my work exists in contrast to all that - it’s freedom, nudity, women, orange, vibrant colors.

IN 00:48:42:11
OUT 00:48:47:13
But it also questions everything, it taps into the visceral side of things.  

IN 00:48:58:02
OUT 00:49:00:21
We look for references, for those who represent us out there.

IN 00:49:04:06
OUT 00:49:13:03
Nina Pandolfo. That’s who I saw. It’s inspiring. Like, wow, there’s a girl painting on the street! How cool! It is possible.

IN 00:49:14:02
OUT 00:49:19:30
She was the one most talked about in the media, she was in books, she was hanging out with Os Gêmeos, she was right there.

IN 00:49:20:13
OUT 00:49:21:07
That was Nina.

TITLE CARD
NINA PANDOLFO
BRAZIL

NINA PANDOLFO:
IN 00:49:22:16
OUT 00:49:29:21
When I started to do graffiti I had nothing to do with the hip hop scene, I didn’t even really know it existed. I was 13 years old.

IN 00:49:30:13
OUT 00:49:40:16
Then one day someone showed me a book from New York, Spray Can Art. That’s where I started to see more. And then Subway Art, which is where I first saw Lady Pink.

IN 00:49:42:03
OUT 00:49:50:20
Between those two books it was almost one hundred percent men. There was just one woman that I remember seeing. So I didn’t really have much for reference.
        
IN 00:49:52:23
OUT 00:50:05:06
When I saw Lady Pink’s work I said, ‘wow, how cool, I’m on the right track’, just because I’m a woman and I’m not into hip hop, doesn’t mean that I have to change up my whole style in order to fit into the world of graffiti.

IN 00:50:10:15
OUT 00:50:25:03
I actually just wanted to paint in the street and share my work, the little girls I painted, the little animals, this super colorful universe. Because the city of São Paulo was – and still is – very, very grey.

IN 00:50:25:21
OUT 00:50:33:19
The houses are grey, all the architecture is grey, the cars are black, white, or grey. It’s a very monochromatic city.

IN 00:50:34:15
OUT 00:50:45:15
So I started to paint in the street to break the monotony for people. They’re stuck in this absurd traffic and suddenly there’s an explosion of color on the wall next to them that transforms their day.  

LADY PINK: While the rest of the world was developing their own style in their own way, Brazil took what New York had taught and threw it out the window. And we had no idea that it would grow into such a large movement that encompasses the whole world.           

NINA:
IN 00:51:02:09
OUT 00:51:14:09
I’m not sure if it’s bigger than other art movements but it’s gaining momentum and appeals to so many. People don’t necessarily need to understand graffiti in order to like it.  
 
FEFE TALAVERA:
IN 00:51:21:05
OUT 00:51:26:19
When I traveled I remember that people loved Brazilian graffiti artists.


TITLE CARD
FEFE TALAVERA
BRAZIL

IN 00:51:27:22
OUT 00:51:39:05
Because the graffiti scene here was really different from the rest of the world. When everyone followed suit we took another route

NINA:
IN 00:51:40:02
OUT 00:51:43:10
The Internet was not easily accessible for everyone here in Brazil.

IN 00:51:44:06
OUT 00:51:50:00
We didn’t have the magazines, we didn’t have the books. We didn’t have any information about graffiti.

FEFE:
IN 00:51:50:15
OUT 00:52:04:10
It started with words in the streets. I remember people telling me about it, like Speto, Gustavo from Os Gêmeos, people who started way earlier than me.

IN 00:52:06:00
OUT 00:52:14:17
There was a guy called ‘Juneca’ and he would write his name all over the place.

IN 00:52:15:07
OUT 00:52:27:05
And from there people started to paint characters. That took off in the 1990s, with guys like Vitché, Os Gêmeos, Hebert, Onesto.

IN 00:52:28:18
OUT 00:52:36:20
And that was the first generation of graffiti that really grew and made a name for Brazilian graffiti.

IN 00:52:38:05
OUT 00:52:45:23
Then there was the next generation and I came up with them. I’m from the second generation of graffiti.

SISS: Meu primeiro pintei no final de 2010, não faz tanto tempo assim.

TITLE CARD
SIMONE SISS
BRAZIL

IN 00:53:04:14
OUT 00:53:12:09
My story is different from graffiti and street artists who started out working in the streets.

IN 00:53:13:00
OUT 00:53:18:03
In my case, I was an adult by the time it caught my attention.  

IN 00:53:23:16
OUT 00:53:38:03
When I first saw a photo of Magrela on top of a ladder painting I thought wow, it’s Rapunzel. She’s up there creating something amazing, and that gives you strength.

MAGRELA:
IN 00:53:41:09
OUT 00:53:51:16
When people ask what graffiti means to me, I tell them it means freedom. Graffiti has given me confidence.

IN 00:53:53:02
OUT 00:54:03:09
It’s given me an opportunity to know São Paulo. It’s the type of city where you wouldn’t go far from home unless you knew someone in another part of town.

IN 00:54:04:00
OUT 00:54:10:16
There’s a lot concentrated in the center of the city, here in the Western Zone, and in Vila Madalena.


IN 00:54:11:11
OUT 00:54:23:06
Graffiti has pushed me to learn more about São Paulo. I’ve gotten to know people who live in the city, who they are and how they think. I’ve met very poor people and very rich people.

IN 00:54:25:05
OUT 00:54:29:20
I started to see my city from outside of my own bubble. That’s what graffiti is to me.

IN 00:54:30:10
OUT 00:54:44:05
There are very distinct social classes here, a huge gap between the rich and the poor. It’s painful to see people cruising around in luxury cars while others die of hunger and face the problems of life on the street.

IN 00:54:44:14
OUT 00:54:53:09
It reflects the condition of our society. São Paulo intrigues me. I like the city because it challenges me constantly.

DINÁ SÓ MINA:
IN 00:55:03:15
OUT 00:55:11:20
It would be impossible for me, and I think for any person from São Paulo, to live in this concrete city if it weren’t tarnished by pichação.

TITLE CARD
DINÁ SÓ MINA
BRAZIL


IN 00:55:12:12
OUT 00:55:28:03
The lettering in São Paulo is very different from that of Rio de Janeiro.

In São Paulo the lines are straight, similar to the architecture of the city.

Even the map of the city, the sidewalks, everything here is straight and geometric.

IN 00:55:34:40
OUT 00:55:39:14
So that’s what we call this specific type of calligraphy here in Brazil – pichação.

IN 00:55:39:22
OUT 00:55:48:01
At times when I was painting people would stop and say
‘that’s not pichação, that’s different, but I saw you with a spray can in your hand, I’m confused’.

IN 00:55:48:13
OUT 00:55:55:20
So I had to explain to them what graffiti was and what I was doing. From the moment I started painting in the street I’ve been explaining to people what graffiti is.

DINÁ:
IN 00:55:57:00
OUT 00:56:00:13
Pichadora is one thing, graffiti artist is another. I never wanted to do graffiti.  

IN 00:56:01:15
OUT 00:56:10:08
I consider myself a pichachadora because I’m someone who questions, who critiques, who wants to provoke.

IN 00:56:11:11
OUT 00:56:21:02
Pichação gained momentum in the 1960s, here in Brazil, in Latin America, in France, with political slogans as a form of protest.

IN 00:56:22
OUT 00:56:36:18
When they start threatening collective and individual rights and democracy, we begin to see walls covered in spray paint, markers on bathroom walls, on public transportation, city busses.
 
IN 00:56:37:08
OUT 00:56:47:02
People start writing because they need to express themselves. They need to express their ideas of liberty, democracy, equality, and justice.

IN 00:56:53:09
OUT 00:56:58:03
I want my art to disrupt society.  

IN 00:56:58:21
OUT 00:57:07:06
So I take things that are happening in our day-to-day lives, here in Brazil and around the world, and I give them a little indirect criticism.

IN 00:57:07:19
OUT 00:57:14:17
It’s criticism done with humor and levity, but deep down it really makes people think.

MAGRELA:
IN 00:57:22:10
OUT 00:57:34:16
São Paulo is bipolar in that regard. Street art can be really beautiful and appealing to the public.

IN 00:57:34:30
OUT 00:57:38:03
But pichação shows us what the city really is –

IN 00:57:39:02
OUT 00:57:45:21
It’s a hard place to live for many, it’s problematic. I think pichação reminds us that those people exist.

IN 00:57:55:10
OUT 00:58:02:14
This Administration made a lot of cutbacks.

The first thing the president did was close the Department of Culture.

IN 00:58:03:09
OUT 00:58:15:20
He interfered with human rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights. You can see the level of regression to conservatism that’s happening now.

TV GLOBO ROBERTO KOVALICK (ARCHIVAL):
IN 00:58:17:09
OUT 00:58:21:14
The City’s war on pichação has spread to street art.

TV GLOBO REPORTER 2 (ARCHIVAL):
IN 00:58:22:00
OUT 00:58:27:10
Mayor João Dória woke up early this morning to paint a section of this wall on Avenida 23 de Maio.

TV GLOBO ROBERTO KOVALICK (ARCHIVAL):
IN 00:58:28:00
OUT 00:58:40:15
The walls of this avenue – Avenida 23 de Maio – were graffiti icons in São Paulo. The largest open-air mural in Latin America measuring almost 5 kilometers in length is no longer part of the landscape.

TV GLOBO ROBERTO KOVALICK (ARCHIVAL):
IN 00:58:40:17
OUT 00:58:52:13
On many walls in São Paulo graffiti and pichação coexisted. They’ve now all been erased. Urban art and filth alike disappeared beneath the same controversial shade of grey.

MAGRELA:
IN 00:58:54:15
OUT 00:59:00:18
My country is sexist, racist, homophobic. It’s oppressive.

IN 00:59:02:09
OUT 00:59:12:01
The left is going to have to come together and I think things will start to start to purge and become more violent.

IN 00:59:13:05
OUT 00:59:19:22
The oppressed are going to have to take to the streets and do the work, go to battle, really fight.

IN 00:59:27:10
OUT 00:59:28:16
    •    Good afternoon.   
    •    Hello.

MAGRELA:                    
IN 00:59:31:00
OUT 00:59:31:10
Everything OK?

POLICE:
IN 00:59:33:00
OUT 00:59:35:00
We received a complaint. Pichação.

MAGRELA:
IN 00:59:35:05
OUT  00:59:35:10
Oh no.

POLICE:
IN 00:59:35:24
OUT 00:59:37:21
Do you have permission to do graffiti here?

MAGRELA:
IN 00:59:38:00
OUT  00:59:45:08
No, we don’t. But I usually do my work in abandoned spaces.
 
POLICE:
IN 00:59:46:05
OUT  00:59:49:12
We have to investigate because this property belongs to someone.   
MAGRELA:
IN 00:59:50:06
OUT 01:00:01:00
Yeah, I didn’t think of it that way.
Since I live close by I always see this plaza totally abandoned. And these girls are making a documentary.

POLICE:
IN 01:00:02:00
OUT 01:00:02:05
About?

MAGRELA:
IN 01:00:02:18
OUT 01:00:05:07
It’s about graffiti. They’re North Americans.

POLICE:
IN  01:00:06:00
OUT 01:00:08:04
Can you pause that for me? You can record later.

MAGRELA:
IN 01:00:08:04
OUT 01:00:08:14
Um, stop.

MAGRELA: IN 01:00:09:17
OUT 01:00:18:00
We live in a country now where the president, the governor, and the mayor are all rightwing white conservative businessmen,

IN 01:00:18:17
OUT 01:00:22:19
who only think about money, their own businesses, and privatizing everything.

IN 01:00:25:00
OUT 01:00:28:17
I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m a little freaked out by this whole situation.    



SWOON: Making something outside and letting it show up in people’s lives in a way that surprises them is super disarming. And I find that, again like returning to the stories of people telling me like –

you know, having conversations with homeless people who are like “I spent the night like talking to your drawings” or “I pass that drawing everyday and it means, like, this to me.”

Or wanting to like engage in like a political conversation about what they think the history of this particular drawing represents,    

means to me that you’re taking – you’re bringing culture, meaningful culture, to people. Rather than allowing it to exist only within institutions which can feel really elitist.

And I appreciate those institutions absolutely but I just have always felt that I never wanted my art only to exist in those spaces.

And when I started working outside and I saw the way that people were reacting, I was like, oh this is powerful. Bringing work to people where they are is a powerful thing.

MAGRELA:
IN 01:01:36:00
OUT 01:01:39:18
I am a troubled woman, so I paint troubled women.

IN 01:01:41:00
OUT 01:01:47:00
What I want to tell the world is that everything is not ok. It’s not ok. If you think everything is ok, what world are you living in? What bubble are you living in?


IN 01:01:47:03
OUT 01:01:53:00
Things are not ok. We always have to change something inside ourselves. We have to constantly seek to rid ourselves of prejudice.

IN 01:01:53:11
OUT 01:02:00:13
We suffer through things unnecessarily. There are a lot of horrible things happening in the world and I want to talk about them.

IN 01:02:01:17
OUT 01:02:07:05
To see if those things will change, if people will become aware and stop just looking out for themselves.

IN 01:02:07:20
OUT 01:02:21:04
To see if we can develop some empathy and start to change even on a micro level. Even in the way that we speak to our neighbors, in how we relate to the people we work with.

NINA:
IN 01:02:28:05
OUT 01:02:39:17
There are always people who try to underestimate women. Those who refuse to see women as capable of creating good work.

IN 01:02:40:03
OUT 01:02:42:22
Those think women are good at domestic work and cooking, and that’s it.

IN 01:02:43:18
OUT 01:02:52:02
For example, here in São Paulo, the City painted over a mural that I did with Os Gêmeos and Vitché and some other artists.

IN 01:02:52:12
OUT 01:03:00:11
As part of the Grey City Project, the government accidentally painted over the wall. The company hired for the job ‘cleaned up’ about 800 square meters of murals.

IN 01:03:01:09
OUT 01:03:16:13
So the city government called the artists for a meeting about re-doing the mural. But when I arrived they assumed I was their secretary, they didn’t think that I was one of the artists. Because I was dressed up, wearing jewelry, and makeup.

IN 01:03:18:00
OUT 01:03:25:04
When I arrived for the meeting a woman said to me, “are you the artists’ secretary?”  And I said, “No, I am one of the artists.” She looks at me and says, “You do graffiti?”

IN 01:03:25:23
OUT 01:03:30:10
It was amazing, like, why can’t a woman be a graffiti artist too?

SISS:
IN 01:03:31:00
OUT 01:03:41:07
People are more inclined to respect us when we show up with a different stance. The type of stance a woman takes is very important.

IN 01:03:42:09
OUT 01:03:51:06
For example, you show up and everyone has a nice wall to paint and they’ve hidden the girl back in some crummy stucco corner.

IN 01:03:52:17
OUT 01:04:03:17
I think that has changed significantly. Now there are women with really solid work, sticking with it, who have earned the respect. And that’s what we want.

IN 01:04:04:10
OUT 01:04:15:00
What I love about street art is that when you see someone’s work, you don’t know if it was a guy or a woman, or an old man or a teenager who did it.

MAGRELA:
IN 01:04:36:15
OUT 01:04:48:18
Here in São Paulo and in Brazil overall, feminism and this younger generation of women are talking more about coming together,

IN 01:04:49:10
OUT 01:04:58:01
gaining more awareness, speaking out against sexual harassment in the streets, talking about rape. Every woman has a story to share.

IN 01:04:58:17
OUT 01:05:12:09
So women are joining forces and we’re realizing just how many of the situations we’ve experienced were sexual harassment and misogyny.

IN 01:05:15:00
OUT 01:05:21:16
And men don’t know how to deal with this. They’re not on the same page as we are.

IN 01:05:24:12
OUT 01:05:34:01
Graffiti and skateboarding, the worlds where I coexist which are generally dominated by men, are not much different than the rest of the culture I’ve grown up in my entire life.

IN 01:05:34:19
OUT 01:05:46:15
It’s just one more boundary to break in a culture full of guys who look at you and say ‘oh, she’s just a woman’. They totally underestimate us.

IN 01:05:50:15
OUT 01:05:56:12
I don’t let being a woman stop me from doing anything. I do it. Because I am a human being. And I want to. Period.

LADY PINK: I believe that street art had a huge impact on the beginning of this early century here around the world. I think that it’s taken art in a whole different direction.

TOOFLY: Now I think every city has a group of women painting and getting together and doing walls. Every country now has been exposed to the culture through the internet.

MARTHA COOPER: It’s basically a community effort. We’re all doing a little bit and it is coming together and it’s really heartening to see that I think women are getting stronger and stronger.

LADY PINK: In America the women’s movement has gained ground and women are seen as much more equal than in other parts of the world where women are still second and third class citizens and it’s a long fight.

SWOON: Our political climate is really representing the consolidation of power in a very, very, very scary way. And so when people get together out into the streets what is happening is that you’re kind of doing a drawback of that power and saying, it won’t be consolidated, in fact it will be present in each of us in our multiplicity. And that’s the strength of those numbers in the streets.

DEMONSTRATORS CHANTING: The people united will never be defeated!

LADY PINK:
Rebellion, it’s necessary in our society and I think we become stagnant, we become boring, we become stale. And the fact that I’m a female you’re gonna have to just get over it. You know, we’re in sports, we’re in the military, we’re strong, we’re tough, we’re brave. We’re foolish and reckless, just like the rest of the guys.

SWOON: This particular creative movement, it feels like the movement of our generation.

LADY PINK: I would say it’s probably the biggest art movement the world has ever seen, in geography and amount of people that participate in every corner of the world. Bigger than the Renaissance, bigger than the Impressionists, bigger than any other, the pop-art movement.  Whatever movement you can mention we are bigger. We have definitely appealed to the masses.

CLAW$$: I want my art to, like, visually impact people even if it’s just for like a fraction of a second. I know that somebody sometime will say to a little girl, like, “a woman did that”, and I think that’s really impactful.