On a little dead end street near Gumpendorfgasse u-bahn station, there is a small series of murals. The most prominent one, is of a man in a black striped long sleeved T-shirt taking a picture with a polaroid camera.
To his right are a few images that look like they are the resulting polaroids – part of his collection perhaps.
These images were painted by Jana and JS, a couple who have been painting murals together for many years.
Photos taken June 2022
In a small area where Resit Efendi Sk. ends at Talimhane Sk. in the Kadikoy district of Istanbul, there are three large murals.
below: Two Polish artists, SEPE (aka Michal Wrega) and chazme (aka Daniel Chazme), painted. If you follow the links to their instagram pages, you will see that SEPE’s work is with faces and figures while chazme’s style is very geometric.
below: A stark mural in black and white showing vehicles falling through an opening in the sky is the work of M-City aka Mariusz Waras (painted in 2014).
below: The last of the three murals is this blue bird with orange feet. It was painted in 2018 by Ukranian artist Alex Maxsiov. It is titled, “Turkish Tea” – perhaps because this bird (like the seagulls seen around Istanbul) has landed on a table with a glass of tea and a plate with unfinished food on it.
Photos taken early June 2022
below: Mural by tankpetrol, painted in 2018 as part of that year’s Bratislava Street Art Fest
below: This mural was created in 2020 by Cart’1.
below: The blue wallpaper has a pattern that is made of the words ‘vanity’ and ‘ego’ repeated hundreds of times.
below: ‘Rozjimanie’ by Fin DAC
below: Daor and Dano, painted these two partial faces
below: Above the coffee shop this statuesque woman, seemingly carved from stone, reaches towards the birds.
below: čo nás ľudí robí krásnymi [loosely: what makes us people beautiful] by Sasha Chagina and Jano Wajcko Vajsabel. It is a promotion by DM, i.e. an advertisement. But it looks so much like a street art mural! You might not agree with it’s inclusion on this page but you’ll have to admit that it has blurred the line between “commerical” and “artwork”.
below: A collaboration between Dutch artist nilsRVA (aka Nils Westergard) and local Viennese artist emilone (aka emanuel jesse) produced this peaceful looking sleeper.
below: The woman on the right with the curly hair was painted by Paola Delfin.
below: Some more emilone pieces – unfortunately with some graffiti added.
below: Down beside the man in the baseball cap, there is text, p.phobia. Is this a “signature” of the person who painted that man? The righthand side of the artwork is more emilone.
The painting are from 2014 and 2015. The photos were taken June 2022.
This mural, a large photograph, has not weathered all that well. It’s title is “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and the artist is Bifido. On her website, Bifido says this about the artwork: “This work should have been called “selfportrait”, as it express how I’m feeling in this moment in the sight of the world. Working, talking, scoping, breathing Tirana atmosphere, I really realized, for the very first time, how it feels to be a woman caught in the grips of this male chauvinist society, to be a woman physically and mentally oppressed by men. As the work progressed, the sense of it changed revealing, maybe, the real reason that. I come back home, to Italy, more aware of something that makes me feel heartbroken, hoping one day something will change.” Please take a look at her website, especially if you want to see the photo in its original form.
By now you may have guessed that the word older in the title of this post has nothing to do with the age of the woman in the mural but in the condition of the mural itself. The Bifido work above is from either 2018 or 2019. Of the same vintage, is a mural by HazardUK
It’s title is “Motra Tone Revisited” which refers to a famous painting, “Motra Tone” also known as ”The Albanian Monalisa”, that was painted by Kole Idromeno (1860-1939).
below: This is a picture of that famous painting (found online, credit: public domain, wikipedia). She hangs in the National Art Gallery in Tirana.
Two large murals on adjacent buildings, both painted during Tirana’s MurAL Fest 2021. In the back is a boy reading, “Overseas Stories”. In the foreground is a large female face.
below: Close up picture of the woman’s face with red slashes. Many of his recent murals are portraits with slashes of colour, especially reds and blues.
below: “Overseas Stories” by Italian artist Mattia Campo Dall’Orto; a boy’s journey of imagination over blue seas as he reads a book.
All of the paintings in this blog post were seen in a lane in Durres Albania, in the “old town” part of the city near the Roman amphitheatre.
Faleminderit Shqiperi = Thank you Albania!
They were all painted in 2014 (8 years ago) so most of them are looking a little weathered.
Written beside the painting below: “Ass. Cult. Ecletica 1st Bienale di Durazzo 2014”.
With thanks to the Mulliri Vjeter coffee shop on Rruga Myslym Shyri in Tirana where I hung out trying to stay cool while editing photos for this post. June 2022
This girl is the central image in a mural in the coastal town of Durres Albania. Under her there is text which reads: “An uneducated society can be more catastrophic than a natural disaster”.
As I walked around Tirana I saw several examples of murals by Albanian artist Eljan Tanini. This blog post features three – a whole building covered by his shapes and colours, a tall vertical mural, and last, a wall with four panels.
below: All sides of the building are covered with whimsical playful shapes in Blloku.
below: Street scene on Rruga Myslym Shyri with the bottom part of Tanini mural showing. This mural was painted as part of MurAL Fest 2018.
below: Four panels in a concrete wall have abstract paintings by Tanini (one on the left, with a blue background, is not shown).
On the southeast corner of the intersection of Bajram Curri Blvd and Rruga Sulejman Delvina in Tirana there is an apartment complex that has been painted in bright coloured stripes.
The stripes change to shapes on the other side.
below: In the middle of the complex is a small structure with one wall painted as part of MurAL fest one year. The title is “Visual Diary” and it the work of Albanian artist Mariola Mocka.
below: Another side of the structure is this abstract painting by noreason.
And here, either the stripes fade away or else they have been partially repainted.
Eyes on the Streets 