Suddenly you come across them. During a short trip or to the supermarket or while walking the dog: a few surprising lines of poetry on a wall that take you out of your daily routine. Sometimes small, sometimes large. But always like a window that suddenly opens up. Citizens of Rotterdam know the feeling. Spoken word artist Moze Naël provides them with it all the time.
InstagramYou don’t have to go to Vienna to come across the work of Austrian artist Chinagirl Tile. The idiosyncratic ceramics that she creates deal with big themes in playful way. With her social criticism, humor and craftswomanship, she leaves them behind in the largest cities of the world as well as in the hidden corners of inhospitable mountains.
InstagramIt’s immediately clear that Feros and Dilkone are brothers when you meet the two Ukrainian artists. But their work shows an equally clear kinship. They both started with graffiti, but gradually let go of letters for a mix of figurative and abstract elements that is bursting with energy. In 2012, they founded the Kickit Art Studio together, with which they create and exhibit their own and other people’s work. During a walk through Rotterdam, the brothers came across the sentence ‘Je maintiendrai’ (I will maintain) in the coat of arms of a house. Without knowing that this is the motto in the coat of arms of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, they were immediately inspired by it and drew a parallel with the war in their home country. “Carelessness and the fragility of life are the two realities that intersect in our mural,” they say about their mural here. “Using Dutch still lifes, we have depicted numerous elements that on the one hand have to do with the city, the country and its inhabitants, and on the other hand with us, Ukrainian artists who live in war conditions.” They hope to open a conversation with the symbolism in their work. The burning candle with the word ‘Future’ on it, for example. Or the house, which seems to stand stably on a stone surface, but on closer inspection balances on smaller pebbles, held up by the knowledge in the books underneath them. But the most telling detail perhaps, is the bookmark in the middle of that pile: the number 927 stands for the number of days that the war in Ukraine had already lasted at the time the painting was completed.
InstagramAnyone who has ever ventured onto a dance floor since the 90s has sooner or later come across the work of DADARA. The countless designs he made for flyers and album covers have been an essential part of dance culture for decades. Psychedelics and stylish symmetry meet in his art, which includes paintings and illustrations as well as performance art and illustrations. And as of 2024, also a mural in the Beverwaard. “I wanted to reflect on our current time in which our news channels are flooded with images of war and destruction,” says the artist about his work there. “Hopefully this wall can be a symbol of hope, but also an image that makes us think and realize that we cannot take a free and peaceful world for granted.” In a sense the mural is in dialogue with the work opposite it, which was painted by the Ukrainian brothers Dilkone & Feros. Their themes overlap, and because of the war between their home country and Russia, the brothers can strongly confirm the message that peace must be cherished. One dove flies away from the swarm in the form of a mushroom cloud, which perhaps symbolizes the possibility of an individual striving for peace, or going against the flow of a majority. If you pay close attention, you can also see that this dove has a predecessor. A similar dove has been painted on one of the houses near the painting. This was painted at the request of the resident there, who lovingly provided the artist with coffee and a chat while he worked. It makes the end result even more firmly anchored in its environment.
InstagramGerman graffiti artist Jascha Mueller is responsible for the largest mural in his hometown of Hannover, together with Christian Stolle and Rotterdam’s own Bier en Brood. The style of the hometown artist is immediately recognizable in his geometric shapes and sharp black-and-white contrasts. In Rotterdam they pioneered further, by making a painting with the help of Spraybot during the street art festival ALL CAPS. With this technique developed by Mueller, paint cans spray a previously designed illustration like a kind of printer onto the wall. It is the first time in the world that this has been applied outdoors. The artists encountered several teething problems. The installation had difficulty handling its own weight at this size and kept getting stuck. While other artists completed their designs after a week during the festival, the Spraybot had only been able to draw a few lines and the device was constantly being tinkered with. A lot of valuable experience has been gained with the technique in this way, although it remains ironic that the painting would have been finished many times earlier by hand.
InstagramFrench artist Swed Oner amazes everyone with his exceptionally detailed, hyperrealistic portraits. He often bases them on photos that he himself takes from people he meets on the street, near the walls he paints. In monochrome colours, he portrays them together with elements that are reminiscent of religious icons. In this way, he elevates ordinary people to people who are celebrated. Here in the Beverwaard, too, he first wandered through the neighbourhood for a day, looking for his subject. He got to know a lively neighbourhood full of cultures, where many children played and, to his surprise, even a small river flowed. The port of Rotterdam, the many backgrounds of the population and their pride in the local football club reminded him of the French port city of Marseille. In his own words, he found “a sincerity that does not deceive.” That is precisely what attracted him to Werner, the man he saw standing on a balcony in the middle of his family after two to three hours of walking. A Feyenoord flag and the city’s coat of arms fluttered on the fence. The artist knew that he had found his muse. He approached him somewhat shyly, after which Werner quickly agreed to be his model. Swed Oner then happily spent the rest of the week on his aerial work platform, enriching the neighbourhood with this special portrait while loudly singing in French.
InstagramThe Maasstad is enriched with art from another world port! Hong Kong is the home town of Devil, who came into contact with graffiti there at the age of 16 through his love of hip hop. Soon after, the devilish cartoon character to which he owes his alias appeared on all kinds of walls. People around him thought it was a strange hobby and complained about the paint smell, but Devil noticed that he felt happy while painting and continued with it. After a quarter of a century of experience with it, his work is appreciated worldwide. The mural that he remembers most is one he made when he was caught by the police. “The painting itself has long since disappeared, but the memory will stay with me forever,” he says with a laugh. The sympathetic-looking devil in this lively style full of bright colours, symbolises a friendly kind of contrariness. Hip-hop and skateboarding culture were not self-evident matters during his youth in Hong Kong, but helped him shape his creativity. Details such as the name of his hometown Hong Kong on the cap, or that of his partner April above the corner of his mouth, give it a personal charge. The sea lion in the middle symbolises the twelve years he worked as a baker, and the various accessories that the devil wears each represent specific memories and experiences from his past. About the end result, he says that his goal is “to give back a feeling of happiness and positivity to the world through my art.”
InstagramThe flowing lines of the artist born as Sneha Shrestha can be seen on walls from Kathmandu to Boston, and from September also in Rotterdam. The Nepalese artist incorporates her mother tongue into immense paintings in which she interweaves Sanskrit script and influences from graffiti into a completely unique form of calligraphy. She is also a driving force behind the Children’s Art Museum Nepal, where children and young people in Kathmandu receive cultural education. After her studies in the US, Shrestha moved to Boston. There, in the capital of the American state of Massachusetts, she came into contact with graffiti. At first, she started photographing work made by artist friends, but she soon ventured into spray painting herself. After she became increasingly more immersed in the culture and developed her skills, she started thinking about how she could incorporate her Nepalese cultural background into graffiti. She found the answer in letters; not those of the Latin alphabet, but in the script of 14th-century manuscripts that she saw in museums. Impressed by the handwriting with which her people wrote centuries ago, she decided to use this as the starting point for her own ‘hand style’. In it, she combines various techniques, often made with tools that she developed herself. For this mural in Rotterdam, for example, she used a new brush of no less than 30 centimetres wide for the first time. This allows her to use even larger proportions while maintaining the fluid lines of uninterrupted movement.
InstagramSometimes a style is so widely imitated that people mistake it for a general characteristic of a medium. This has happened since the 1970s with the characters of legendary cartoonist Vaughn Bodē and his son Mark Vaughn Bodē, who set the standard for figurative graffiti. When Vaughn Bodē died in 1975 at the age of 33, his 12-year-old son Mark made a drastic decision. He may have to say goodbye to his father, but Mark refused to do so from the fantasy world he had created. “Characters like Cheech Wizard were my friends. I decided to keep them alive and spent all my time drawing them.” After three years of working at the drawing board, he had adopted his father’s style. The work of 15-year-old Mark Bodē was published in the magazine Heavy Metal, for which he completed an unfinished story by his father. He continued to work with his characters in publications for various publishers, but gradually discovered that his father’s characters had been given a particularly rich second life on trains and walls. The appreciation that his father’s work received within this world inspired him to pick up the spray can himself. Since then, he has painted countless murals worldwide, including this one in Rotterdam. “The thousands of schoolchildren who happily walk past it every day are my greatest reward,” he says. “They will remember Da Hat [the character on the right] for the rest of their lives.”
InstagramIn his younger years, Daniël-Michel Saptenno grew up in the Moluccan community of Krimpen aan den IJssel. He moved to Rotterdam, where he stood out as a painter due to the special colour choices in his floral paintings and the strong connection with his Moluccan roots. For example, he painted an impressive series based on stamps of the Republic of South Moluccas; stamps that once anticipated a dream that did not come true. The birds in the painting he made in the Beverwaard share that inspiration. The colour areas in their silhouette are not only reminiscent of a sheet of unused stamps, the colours of those areas directly refer to those of the ‘Republik Maluku Selatan’ stamps that were printed from 1949 to 1952. “These stamps have never been officially used due to the lack of international recognition of the Republic of South Moluccas,” the artist explains. “The scattered letters symbolize messages that never reached their destination. With this mural I want to give those stamps – and the untold stories they carry – the recognition they deserve.”
InstagramGarrick Marchena’s photorealistic paintings have already fooled many admirers of his work on Curaçao. For example, many people who see a beautifully painted bird sitting in the ridge of a building on his home island, often don’t realize that the recess of that building in which it is nestled, also exists only in paint. Marchena, who was born in Aruba and raised in Curaçao, actually wanted to study architecture, but on the advice of his father, he chose civil engineering. He studied that course in Pittsburgh, USA, but ultimately he couldn’t let go of drawing and painting. “I started it reluctantly, but now I’m happy with it,” he reflects. “It makes me feel much more comfortable in coming up with crazy designs. It helps me a lot to imagine the right proportions, because I know how it would work if it was actually built.” Despite his expert technical insight, he also makes a point of keeping the human hand visible in his work. “I like it when you can still see the brushstrokes. That makes it more organic, especially when you can see the underlying structure come through it.” His work in Rotterdam is a portrait of a friend who makes her own costumes and headdresses. “There is something typically Caribbean about it, but at the same time she gives it her own, modern twist. By portraying her creativity, it has actually become a very multidisciplinary work. I hope that it brings a little bit of the Caribbean sun to Rotterdam.”
InstagramRotterdam artist Ilona Bal can evoke a whole world of images with just a few overlapping shapes. On their own, they seem like abstract color planes, but in their interplay they suddenly become a rock formation, tree or setting sun; unmistakably part of a dreamy landscape. It is the specific combination of shapes, colours and the illusion of depth that she manages to evoke with them that makes the whole thing unmistakably Ilona Bal. She approaches her work as a kind of puzzle. In it, she starts with a sketch, usually of a landscape or natural object. The contrast between that strongly graphic style and its organic origin is part of what makes her work so fascinating. Bal enjoys deliberately not making the work too detailed. “It leaves it open to the viewer, so that the work can evoke different feelings or memories in different people.” During ALL CAPS 2024, she captured the special atmosphere that this evokes for the first time in a mural. She really enjoyed working on this format from the aerial platform, in the middle of the people who would live and work with her work. “Everyone sees something different,” she says about the reactions. “Some see islands, some see tents like at the Lowlands festival and others see people. That’s what I like about art, letting people wander off in thought for a moment.”
InstagramThanks to Jimmy Granti a.k.a. @localhero82 the image of boxing legend Cor Eversteijn can now be seen all over the world, from Red Square in Moscow to Miami. There Jimmy, who doesn’t want his face to be in the public, has placed the stickers very carefully. This Rotterdam artist does amazing sticker art, but also works with stencils and paste ups. We’re glad to have him in our team for a very long time (!) and we’re beyond proud to announce he has earned a spot in our artist line-up for 2023. Make sure you don’t miss his intervention art throughout Feijenoord!
InstagramLe Diamantaire is an artist from Paris, who started to stick diamonds on the streets of the world. His unique art pieces are made from pieces of mirrors, which he finds in the garbage. Thru this street art project, he wants to show the world that it’s still possible to transform waste into jewels, literally. From there, he has evolved into an amazing sculpture artist. For our upcoming festival, he’s taking his art back to the streets! And you, as a visitor of ALL CAPS 2023, can search for these little gems!
InstagramBarbara Helmer (1966) is a visual artist hailing from Rotterdam. She is a painter, and in addition she engages in drawing, screen printing, risoprinting and murals. Her work is often about fractions; small parts of a bigger picture. For example, about light shining through an object or reflecting on it. It can refer to jewelry, quartz and minerals and in a more abstract way to linked shapes. Her works are layered abstrations, based on the coutourses of gemstones. The starting point for her work comes from various sources; her immediate environment, photographic work, nature, magazines, prints and even instruction manuals. Helmer carefully applies various techniques, and her mastery of a method is essential to achieving specific effects and a high-quality painting. She flirts with outdoor space and large areas, so we decided to put her in our mural lineup. So from september on, more people can enjoy her work!
InstagramBorn in 1975, Ricardo van Zwol grew up in Rotterdam and has been drawing and painting for much of his life. At a young age he got the chance to turn his hobby into his work. From advertising paintings he made the step to autonomous artist. He paints realistically, his style can be recognized by the detail combined with a rough finish. His love for tattoo art comes out in some of his works, as in the artwork he made on the pillars of the Van Brienenoord Bridge in our beautiful city.
InstagramWith a challenging past, the present of Tommy Hagen is fully dedicated to different forms of art as an outlet of this previous life. Born in Apeldoorn 1975 and growing up in an era of globalization, Tommy Hagen and his crew pioneered in bringing American hiphop to their backyards and further inland. Influenced by this scene, he started experimenting with scissors and clippers to bring his fascination for lines and patterns alive. Naturally, he rolled into hairstyling for some of the leading brands like Levi’s Yohji Yamamoto, Kenzo and Dior. His brush was a scissor, with which he would cut the most avant-garde, provocative haircuts. Tommy exploited similarities between barbers and artists, such as cutting, painting and sculpting, and used his toolkit to seemingly switch from cutting hair, to cutting paper, tapes and other artifacts. A signature trademark of the artist. His work is a visualization of his personal journey and his sharp, rough, curious look towards our beautifully disturbed world. A style that manifests itself on an unconventional intersection of brutalism and transcendental meditation.
InstagramAdrian Falkner is building upon 20 years of ongoing success: Under his writer name SMASH137 he has achieved worldwide recognition. His graffiti can be seen on countless walls and his style is considered to be formative worldwide, as he combines technical precision with an innovative approach to the traditional vocabulary of graffiti writing. Curved lines and open areas, that blend smoothly into one another, along with striking colours characterize his works in the public as well as the distinctive ‘Cracking’. As one of the pioneers, SMASH137 develops this technique, where a spray can is pierced forcing the colour to be expelled uncontrolledly. Instead of accurately placing lines and areas, quick and steady working becomes inevitable. This dynamic process determines a new rhythm of colours, shapes and forms.
InstagramJorge Charrua doesn’t paint people’s portraits as much as he paints how they’re feeling. He conveys this not through the subject’s enigmatic expressions, but through the overall mood of the piece. If Jorge Charrua’s portraits came with a soundtrack, it would be produced by Burial. The atmospheric and gritty urban beats would provide the required dimension for Charrua’s portraits to walk away from their frames and live their lives – moody, stoic, lost. The sense of nostalgia pervades Charrua’s intimate portraits. He draws on his childhood, the 90s. Hip-hop and videos games permeate the paintings – in the style he uses and the style of the protagonists. Charrua’s thought-process on art is, at the very essence, about making something happen. When we asked last year who you, our visitors, would most like to see in Rotterdam, Charrua was mentioned the most. Of course, we don’t ignore that advice!
InstagramGeorge Rose is often mistaken for a boy, because of her first name. She is actually a visual artist with a flair for not taking life too seriously. She spends most of her time up ladders painting murals and sometimes makes it into her studio just to try something a bit more normal. She feels most at home with a paintbrush in hand but also likes the feel of a pen, spray can, drill or tablet. Since graduating, George has thrown caution to thawing and abandoned her formal design training opting to pursue a multidisciplinary art practice. She has spent the last several years pretending to be a gypsy. She’s travelling from city to city to work and create new murals. George Rose is an artist whose multidisciplinary practice combines colour, gradients and shapes that uplift and inspire. She has worked for commercial clients including AMP Capital, Instagram and TikTok to name a few. She has worked across Asia, Europe and the USA – and of course, Australia. We’re happy to announce she’s coming to Rotterdam to make our beautiful city even more beautiful!
InstagramSophie Mess is an artist based in the UK, painting vibrant botanical-inspired murals. Travelling wherever her art takes her, both UK and Worldwide, her dreamy large scale artworks bring colour and joy to the environment. Bringing to life beautiful supersized flowers, birds and inspiring words, transforming spaces and inspiring positivity. Sophie is known for her colorful botanical-inspired paintings and the Rotterdam one won’t be different! Seeking to bring the joy of nature into my work, she’s inviting the imagination wonder and finds new playful perspectives on our natural world.
InstagramFor Anders Reventlov (’84) it all started in the provincial town of Bredballe, Denmark, in 1996 in the gloom and darkness of the night along train tracks. It was here where an unstoppable lust for adventure mixed with a lust for drawing, the starting point for a long adrenaline-filled journey. Reventlov was admitted to the Art Academy and thought he should get rid of graffiti forever. Ever since picking up his first spray can, and right up until today, Reventlov is deeply involved in the world-wide graffiti culture. Using it actively in both his own art practice and his work as a curator. With his in-depth and detailed knowledge of the many aspects of graffiti and street art, Reventlov is a wandering encyclopedia, mixing the historical material with playful and experimental reflections in his work. The artistic journey that began with name writing has led to exhibitions at museums and galleries in Denmark as well as Brazil, Germany, Sweden, Japan and the Netherlands. Anders Reventlov’s works are included in the Danish Art foundations collection. His work is abstract, and all his artworks are in relation to each other. It is a large organic work, which is never finished.
InstagramThe biggest wall of ALL CAPS 2023? We’ll leave that one to ONESIKER. Bron in 1975, ONESIKER is a French street artist who began his career on the streets of Toulouse in the early 1990s. Additionally, he moved to Canada where he is considered to be one of the pioneers of graffiti. It might seem impossible to cover the entire side of the Varkenoord viaduct in seven days, but this artist from Toulouse is going to use so many different techniques that he won’t shy away from the challenge. Airless machines, fire extinguishers, rollers, spray cans and all of it mixed together. This promises a wild and abstract work that will feel like a diary. In fact, he writes messages all over his work, so we’re curious what he will bring to Rotterdam!
InstagramENERI is an inversed version of the real name of Irene Avramelos. She’s most of all a powerful representative of female graffiti in Brazil, specifically wild style. The walls of her native city Sao Paolo became the perfect canvas for the invention of her style. Her art is not limited to walls that are within the reach of any graffiti artist; She has adopted an intrepid way of painting, in which she has to climb buildings without any safety equipment: pure street style! In addition, her style includes pixação, which are the letters of the alphabet used by graffiti artists; they have a rectilinear and vertical style. This woman is a true powerhouse. In a male dominated world, she doesn’t give a flying F.
InstagramMina is internationally renowned within the graffiti scene. Her personified playful letters and flop-characters are distinctive to her name. Her unique style captivates through the clarity of form and line, through the dynamics of the composition, the recurring comic elements and the charming wink in which she creates references to current themes. She is a master of the imagination with a fondness for high-contrast, intense colours. Mina’s large-scale works are full of joie de vivre and energy, always convey a powerful expression which entrances the viewer into her artistic universe. Her creation Nana, the female figure with super feminine benefits, presents herself as pleasant, humorous and full of openness.
InstagramBorn in 1973 in Schwäbisch Hall in the southern part of Germany STOHEAD works in Berlin since 2006. Stohead started his career as a classic graffiti writer at the age of 14. In 1999 he moved to various cities with a longer stay in Hamburg, he joined the artist group ‘getting-up’ and started his career as a freelance artist and illustrator. His passion for characters shows off in sculptures which followed his early figurative studio works. They are done on a high handskill level that was tought to him during the handcraft educations he went through during his job career. The puristic form of graffiti, tagging and throw ups is a form of contemporary calligraphy for Stohead today becoming his own and newer style on canvas called Round tip.
InstagramWith her unique art, Miss.Printed never fails to tell mini stories. Filling the gap between collage, street art and photography.
InstagramTiktoy managed to get as many intervention art pieces in Feijenoord as possible. You can still find many of ‘em.
InstagramThe pens, brushes, or in this case spray cans of Andre HZS proliferate across paper, wall, or skin, as intuitive patterns of language and drawing. A nod to the Rotterdam metro can be found as well.
Instagram Google MapsAnna T-Iron had a message for everybody who travels through the Roentgenstraat. Your Ego Is Not Your Amigo, can be read in various fonts and colors, on the elevator shaft of this apartment building.
Instagram Google MapsWith an extraordinary level of productivity, Stockholm based artist Ola Kalnins has now produced a large collection of Skullnins paintings. They have a remarkably clean design mixed with abstract motifs and unique color combinations within them.
Instagram Google MapsRoids has made a special one! The lettering says environment, no matter if the door of the building is open or closed.
Instagram Google MapsPappas Pärlor made every festival visitor happy with his pixel art pieces
InstagramThis giant driving art piece has been made by Vandals On Holidays. ‘Cause that’s what they do.
InstagramRotterdam based artist Bijdevleet reminds you that, both as a city and as a human being, you are constantly evolving. And in the moment you can only be the best version of yourself.
Instagram Google Maps‘Different travellers, same boat’ reads the colorful graffiti-work of Chas Loveletters. He painted it while he was working up there, overlooking the Rijnhaven and Maashaven harbours nearby.
Instagram Google MapsWhen you look up, you might just end up in Collin van der Sluijs’ secret garden, which is full of life. He created this three sided mural in just one week!
Instagram Google MapsTo this day, the letters D, O, E and S form the basis of DOES’ work. Here, he created his name in typical DOES fashion, accompanied by bright colors and smiley face.
InstagramErico Smit portrayed his son in a 6 frame animation, around a little tea house at the Afrikaanderpark.
Instagram Google MapsHow to make a playground even better for the kids who are going to play there? Ilse Weisfelt has the answer.
Instagram Google MapsIs it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a rocket! Check out this space station and get ready for the launch!
Instagram Google MapsJoram Roukes explains got inspiration from stock photography and recycling for this mural on Afrikaanderplein.
Instagram Google MapsKlaas Lageweg created a colorful peacock (‘pauw’ in Dutch, a play on our festival previous name) in which both his digital and old school interests are coming through.
InstagramTake a look down the rabbit hole from Alice In Wonderland.
InstagramA full mural made out of cement on bricks. Nasbami, you’re crazy for this one!
Instagram Google MapsIn co-creation with all the kids from the neighborhood, Oxen Mystic made this floor piece.
Instagram Google MapsFor his series ‘RWG’ (Robot With Guns), ZEDZ made a 24 x 14m piece on a urban sports field!
Instagram Google MapsDazetwo freed the birds during his visit to Rotterdam!
InstagramJust 3 days before our festival started, Didier decided to use an older design instead of the idea he intended to use, as the older design was a better match with this specific wall.
Instagram Google MapsBecause this small building serves as a tea house, Helen decided to paint tea leaves on it.
InstagramA shout out to everybody who’s able to read the text Saïd Kinos painted in this mural.
Instagram Google MapsMost of the time you can find this floating canvas, painted by SMOK, at Leuvehaven.
InstagramYou had to search for those extreme small art pieces, when Slinkachu was in town. But he took it to the next level in the Botanical Gardens, where he hide some of his greatest work.
InstagramMost of his works are created from a single piece of wire, which only makes it more impressive. Spenser Little bends the wire with a pair of pliers and that’s really all he does in terms of technique, though the results look much more complex. Funny 2.0!
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