For the exhibition at the prestigious MACRO Museum, we produced an urban art catalogue retracing the first five interventions of Forgotten Project (2015 – 2016). I wrote the text about Portuguese street artist Addfuel, which I’m sharing in this post, together with some photos from the opening night of “Forgotten: The Exhibition“.
Forgotten: The Catalogue
For the catalogue of the urban art exhibition we did at Rome’s MACRO Museum, I wrote a text about the street artist who kicked off the whole Forgotten Project in September 2015: Diogo Machado, aka AddFuel.
“Diogo Machado’s art comes from the encounter between the Portuguese tradition of ceramic decoration and street art. With stencils and spray cans, the artist reinterprets the typical facades of Portuguese buildings covered with azulejos, transforming the purely ornamental decorative pattern into an unexpected and ironic scene filled with iconic characters and elements from the strong imprint of pop. It is this duality between past and present that give movement to his artwork, in the jump from overview to detail, that is from the initial illusion of being in front of a traditional work of art to a contemporary one.
Born in Cascais in 1980, Diogo Machado began working as a graphic designer and illustrator in 2003. In 2008 he painted his first urban artwork in Cascais, based on the reinterpretation of the tiles, and since then he has been invited to create many others in Portugal and abroad.
Over the years, the game of symmetry that forms the basis of his artwork has been created not only on the walls of many countries, but also on ceramics, canvas, fabric and wood.
In the two complimentary artworks with which the artist has named the theme “Forgotten…Traditions” at the exhibition at the MACRO, Diogo Machado takes us beneath the surface, revealing that behind the grey concrete is a world made up of bright colours and humour”.
Giulia Riva – Forgotten Project Exhibition Catalogue
Forgotten: The Exhibition
After bringing you with me behind the scenes of the first five urban art interventions of the Forgotten Project, now I’m sharing some photos from behind the scenes of the exhibition at MACRO Museum. The five Portuguese street artists (Addfuel, Frederico Draw, Bordalo II, MaisMenos, and Daniel Eime) flew back to Rome to celebrate with us this important milestone of Rome’s newborn street art project, and the location couldn’t be more perfect! In my mind, the former slaughterhouse of Rome (Mattatoio Testaccio) is the epitome of Rome’s forgotten architectures!
