In recent years, street art has gathered a lot of momentum across the globe and we’re seeing more and more cities getting involved in outdoor ‘interventions’. Italy is no exception: Rome, Milan, Mantua and now, Acquapendente. The Urban Vision Festival took place in early July – the festival’s primary goal was to create an onslaught of artistic and creative energy that would spread through Acquapendente’s historic center.
British artist Helen Bur was invited to paint a mural for Urban Vision and she chose to paint the poignant portrait of a migrant child. Her work is raw, gritty, and resembles that of an oil painting that you’d expect to see on a canvas. It evokes empathy and compassion in its viewers. The message she tries to convey is both simple and complex: every child should have the freedom to fly away and escape the hands of oppression. She chose this subject in response to the increase in the number of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean sea, where several hundreds have drowned – desperate people attempting to flee violence and poverty in exchange for the hope of a better life.
Bur uses traditional techniques when in the studio, applying oil to canvas. Conversely, she opts for a brush and roller when painting outdoor murals. Through these diverse mediums, she explores paintings and their ability to provide a contemporary social narrative. Weaving together images from the mass and online media through digital collage, she also examines how the over saturation of imagery and information can leave us in a state of confusion, where our own narratives about our reality are subconsciously formed, creating a position of daily surrealism as the norm.
