A GROUP OF INNER-CITY ARTISTS CREATE THE POSTER FOR SEVILLE’S BIENAL

While we still don’t know the program of Seville’s 16th Bienal de Flamenco to be held September 15th to October 9th and soon to be announced, the starting shot has already been given with the unveiling of the official poster.  For the first time in the history of the Bienal, the work was created by a group of four of the most important creators of urban art: Suso33, San, Niño de las Pinturas and Seleka.  The poster, which was presented by Seville’s mayor Alfredo Sánchez Montseirín, is a modern, innovative, ground-breaking image, both in concept and in the representation of flamenco icons.

“There are great parallels between flamenco and urban art” says Seleka, “because both were born from popular expression”.  There is certainly much similarity between the development of flamenco in urban areas of Andalusia during the 19th century and beginning of the the 20th, with the development of graphic arts in large metropolitan centers of the United States, Europe and eventually the rest of the world.  At the same time there is a parallel between the “purity” of flamenco that of graffiti as far as techniques, forms of expression, the clandestine nature of painting in the street and the individuality of exhibiting in a gallery.  On this occasion the urban artists are ideal for representing a renewed kind of flamenco in search of modernization at the level of public communication, demonstrating the city’s openness to new art-forms.