The Catacombs of the City
by Guilherme Wisnik

In his famous essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin connects the existence of a work of art to two opposing motivations: those created simply to exist (cult value) and those created to be seen (exhibition value).

Though not yet "art" as we define it, Paleolithic cave paintings are the best example of the first case, since the painted moose or bison—found in almost inaccessible parts of caves—were meant to remain secret, "seen" only by spirits. Hence the magical function of these paintings.

This idea came to mind while watching the documentary In the Trace of the Invisible (2006), by Laura Faerman and Marília Scharlach, screened at the last Resfest. The film follows graffiti artist Zezão as he wanders through São Paulo, revealing the locations he chooses for his "works": abandoned buildings, riverbanks of the Tietê River, and especially underground galleries of streams, sewers, and rainwater retention tanks (“piscinões”).

Without attempting to extract from Zezão’s "work" a general thesis on metropolitan experience, the film succeeds in revealing the monumental city hidden beneath the one we know day to day. In a particularly striking scene, the camera follows Zezão on an endless patrol through dark corridors and halls, with sewage running ankle-deep, until suddenly, after climbing a pipe and opening a manhole, we see him emerge into broad daylight on a busy avenue, on an ordinary day in the city.

Driving a battered Volkswagen Beetle along the marginal Tietê, Zezão points out hard-to-reach places where he has intervened and refers to the unity of his artistic project. He does not say so explicitly, but if we consider the scale and systemic nature of his "work," it could be compared to an urban form of "land art."

Indeed, his fixation on ruined—and even abominable—places is not accompanied by a rebellious or political attitude, nor by praise of the city’s decay. Rather, it expresses a genuine excitement for urban life, for the possibility of accessing the complex weave and overlapping layers of the city’s fabric, becoming a solitary witness to its secret dimension.

Zezão paints hidden places, absolutely inaccessible to the ordinary gaze, defining the street artist’s attitude as a desire to claim the painted space as his own—to be able to say, "It’s mine." Curiously, this drive to appropriate parallels the distant action of Paleolithic shaman painters, who sought to control reality through secret inscriptions. The difference is that, unlike those nomadic hunters, our graffiti artist is an anonymous city dweller, living in an urban opacity where all those magical cult dimensions—once born out of awe before life and death—are now buried and turned into garbage.