From NYC to Berlin, passing through Rome, there is a new unstoppable vibe in street art.
Street art is the term used to describe all those forms of art that find their place in public areas, often illegally and through diverse techniques ranging from spray, to artistic stickers, from video projections to sculptures and much else.
Different forms of non-authorized artwork have always characterized walls and public spaces of big cities, from New York City’s peripheral islands of Bronx and Queen’s, to Berlin’s Kreuzberg and Friederichshain until the open-air gallery of Eastside.
It’s an artistic wave that in the last decade has crushed also on the eternal city, slowly coloring peripheries and more central areas alike with graffiti and murals. Among them, the Ostiense quarter can surely be considered the vanguard of this trend.
This is easy to notice at the corner between via del Porto Fluviale and via delle Conce, where former air force barracks stand, now renamed Fronte del Porto: on the façade, now there are many colorful alien faces looking at us, made by Blu, seen as one of the most important street artists by the Observer; here his work wants to denounce the social distress of the homeless that in order to find shelter are forced to abusively occupy empty buildings, who in this mural look down for possible threats.
Going down via Ostiense, turning right to via dei Magazzini Generali, there is JB Rock’s Wall of Fame. 60 meter long, it paints on a wall a long amazing gallery of myths: one after the other you can see historical characters, cinema icons, international stars, in alphabetical order, from Alighieri Dante to Zorro.
Along parallel via del Porto Fluviale, at the bottom of the road we can find the huge “Swimmer” by Iacurci, on top of Pescheria Ostiense: realized for the 2011 Outdoor Festival, this rather stylized artwork describes a giant awkwardly dressed up in a sporty outfit, while swimming in a gigantic urban aquarium surrounded by colored fishes; the author message here is positive, an encouragement to create a new environment where to live together more harmoniously.
Lately have appeared several organized tours around the area, with the purpose of bringing more and more people to observe what is now known as “Ostiense district”, witnessing how many today consider this place as center of the new artistic trend of the Roman scene.