Title: Wildflowers
Location: Cadiz, Spain
Artist: Axel Void
For: Ayuntamiento de Cádiz
Year: 2023
Photo Credits: Axel Void
“This mural attempts to serve as an aesthetic essay, on concepts related to natural stages of existence, that can potentially overlap: The wild or feral, the domesticated or subjugated, and the stray or forsaken. This last one being – as well – a cyclical transition to the feral.
The image interpreted in the mural references the plants growing through the cracks in concrete directly in front of the wall, which faces a large derelict lot. In the center of the mural sits a white rectangle with a gestural line drawing based on the movements of a chess game played at the neighborhood chess club – a few meters from the wall – by the teacher and a student.
This lot is surrounded by several working class neighborhoods near the bay, and at the end — or beginning — of Cádiz. This lot hosted one of the biggest airplane manufacturers that supported most of the area’s economy.
I was raised in this area from the ages of 3 to 16. Near this lot still stands a mural I painted when I was 12 years of age, dedicated to my friend Piki that died a few months before the mural was done.
This lot and these plants and flowers serve as a metaphor and a mirror to human existence and cohabitation in a neighborhood. The area has changed drastically going from a lively and lived-in, fairly rough, and impoverished place; to an overpriced, “developed” area in the process of touristification. As this could be seen as a transition onto the stage of subjugation.
The mural stands as an installation in an area of resilience, a theatrical, almost altar-like place for reflection. A lot where people and dogs walk together, others live, kids skate, insects thrive, birds migrate, a variety of plants grow, and flowers bloom.
Soon we will say all this used to be an empty lot.”
Axel Void
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Categories: OperArt, Street art
Barbara Picci 