A new movement is emerging in Philly’s street art scene. Oddly enough, it’s happening indoors.
Last May, Step Outside: Art from the Underbelly, a two-day show featuring over 75 street and graffiti artists, kicked off a greater project to promote Philly’s outdoor creatives in gallery spaces.
Street artist Doomed Future, one of the project’s lead organizers, said that the “Step Outside” label has become part of a new art collective in the city with a series of upcoming shows.
“It’s artists for artists,” he said. “Everyone in Step Outside is an artist — everyone is a part of it. We know what the people want. It’s like a football coach that played football. We’re not just curators. We are in the scene.”
While it may seem counterintuitive for street and graffiti artists to create for gallery spaces, Doomed Future explained that the shows are an extension of the work artists are already making and showing.
“The city of Philly is painting over everybody’s [artwork] in like less than 24 hours,” he said. “So to have a little temporary installation, it means a lot to everybody.”
The collective’s second-ever show, The Family Room, is currently on display. Instead of a gallery, you can check it out at a second-hand furniture store — Jinxed in South Philly. It’s not just a two-day pop-up, but runs through October.
The show is more intimate than the first. Twelve Philly street art and graffiti artists have their work on display at the entrance, and it’s available for purchase.
The area has been arranged into a living room. There is a fireplace, complete with a video of a crackling fire inside. A vintage couch sits in the middle. On the walls are framed photographs of the Step Outside artists — family portraits, if you will.
And like their previous show, it’s an interactive event. A temporary wall has been added to the store that visitors can draw on, add a sticker, wheatpaste or do whatever they want. Outside, another wall is available for graffiti artists to tag.
While protest groups go to prison for vandalising artworks, that was turned on its head at the gallery’s opening last Saturday, with artists adding their mark to different elements in the show. They defaced — or added flair — to the portraits with writing and stickers. Children picked up crayons and drew on the makeshift wall. In this way, the room is an active art piece in itself. Drinks from a mobile bartender, Mix it Up, were for sale. On the way out, guests could buy stickers and T-shirts.
The plan is for this interactive element to be a signature of Step Outside shows.
“You can come to our show, tag walls, hit things up legally, not worrying about getting arrested or anything like that,” said artist Red Hound Heavy Hammer, another organizer of Step Outside. “We want to provide for the community and build that community.”
In the corner of the room sat an interactive dog sculpture, where people could add a different kind of tag — a dog tag. The idea is that no family room is complete without man’s best friend. This dog, however, is robotic with glowing green eyes.
“ ‘Adopt me and tag me’ is the title of the piece,” explained artist RoboQ4, a member of the Step Outside team who helped build the show. “There’s a chain attached to the dog, and people can write their little tags and chain it to the dog. So, whoever buys the dog gets all the tags with it.”
The Family Room features pieces from some of Philly’s most recognized street artists.
Artist Sean 9 Lugo worked with Doomed Future to create a series of Spiderman-themed artworks, in which everyone’s friendly neighborhood superhero has Lugo’s signature teddy bear for its head. In one of the works, he can be seen swinging with a version of venom, complete with Doomed Future’s symbol.
“It’s a blessing anytime you get to show any type of work,” Lugo said. “It is a blessing, not only as a street artist, but as an artist — period — whether it’s a gallery or Jinxed or whatever.”
The show also features up-and-coming artists.
“My art is very political,” said Alacran, an illustrator and musician from Colombia who started participating in Philly’s art scene a few years ago. “I come from a country that is beautiful but also has a long history of violence, so I’m used to seeing a lot of art and graffiti in the streets. Painting walls is an act of protest; the street is our memory. When I got here to the States, I saw myself being part of a marginalized community, which is the immigrant community.”
Alacran has three paintings in the show, and each takes a strong political stance. In one, a cat is jumping over a wall — a metaphor for defying borders. In another, she paints President Trump depicted as a cockroach getting squished by a boot wearing an ATD ankle bracelet. Her artist name means scorpion in Spanish.
“I think my art is a fight. It’s a struggle,” she said. “So, I just want to communicate how angry I feel about all the injustice in the world and the persecution of immigrants in this country, including myself.”
The Step Outside team is already thinking ahead to its next show, which will likely be at a new location. According to Doomed Future, the vision is ultimately to find a permanent location.
“We would have our Step Outside shows that welcome everybody, but then we would also like to work with individuals,” he said. The team would be open to working with anyone who wants to curate a show, as long as it centers around street art and graffiti. “We’re working on different venues, but eventually in a couple years, we’d like to get our own place.”
The goal is to welcome any street or graffiti artist in Philadelphia to feel accepted in the space.
“There’s a lot of animosity between graffiti and street artists, so we’re trying to break that taboo,” Doomed Future said. “We do get along. People think that we don’t, but we do … A lot of us are just doing the same thing in a different medium.”
Lugo echoed this sentiment.
“I’m just excited for the Step Outside team,” he said. “It’s a bunch of like-minded people trying to help and represent other artists. In this world of creating, a lot of times people look at it as competition, and there’s not enough places to eat. It becomes very competitive. But for a bunch of artists to get together and give other artists opportunities, it’s a beautiful thing to see.”
The post Step Outside, Philly’s new collective of graffiti and street artists, is bringing outside art indoors appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY.
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