Painting the Town Red to Bring Pride and Peace to a Favela?

Dutch Artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn who meet when they started working together in 2005 while filming a documentary about hip hop in the favelas of Rio and São Paolo for MTV were inspired by the visit. They decided to bring outrageous works of art to unexpected places, starting with painting enormous murals in the slums of Brazil together with the local youth.

What began as a single mural here or a most impressive redesign of a concrete stairway into a illustrative koi pond has grown into a plan to paint the entire favela into a colorful explosion on the side of a hill. The idea being that ownership, pride and hope will spur the locals into viewing the slum as something to build on and protect as opposed to exploit and escape from. I am always interested to see solid case studies on if this works or not since I have seen first had it both change a community and also fail miserably in a separate instance and get trampled à la pearls before swine. Akin to that would be ABC’s Extreme Makeover Home Edition where you wonder how many of the new homes mansions are in forclosure or complete disarray.

Regardless though the work is amazing and quite interesting, I only hope the artists do get to complete the project it will be interesting to see it as a whole.