Giant koi swimming up 13th Street? Believe it. The Favela Painters are coming to Philadelphia. In mid-September, Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn, better known as the team Haas&Hahn, arrive here for a major public art project that spans three Philadelphia neighborhoods, trains countless new artists and brings a bit of Brazil to the city.
Favela is the term used for the slums of Rio de Janiero, lawless places ruled by criminal syndicates. Over the past five years, Haas&Hahn have transformed the walls and streets of these mountainside neighborhoods that loom over downtown Rio. Outrageous color and imagery, visible from all parts of the city, have transformed trash strewn chaotic areas into internationally renowned public art galleries.
Now the Favela Painters are set to transform Philadelphia, and the location of their work will be in some pretty high profile places: the 13th Street corridor owned by
Goldman Properties in Center City; in North Philadelphia at Lehigh and Germantown Avenues, near
The Village of Arts and Humanities (where Haas&Hahn will reside during the project); and in
Manayunk, on old industrial buildings facing Interstate 76.
Funding, which is budgeted at just under $500,000 for the three-part project, comes from
The Knight Foundation,
The U.S. Department of Commerce, Goldman Properties and
The Manayunk Development Corporation.
The teams that will work on the project will be trained by the Haas&Hahn guild. "People who don't have a lot of opportunities will be able to work with international artists," says Golden, who describes the artists' philosophy as a model for passing knowledge on. "What's the test of a good project? The shifting perspectives of people who made the art and people who live with it."
This will be the first permanent U.S. project for Haas&Hahn, who also created an installation for
Art Basel Miami in 2010. Jane Golden, Executive Director of the
Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia, met the Favela painters through hip hop art consultant
Todd Bressi, who brought Haas&Hahn to Miami. Bressi is a lecturer at The University of Pennsylvania and also worked on the
Philadelphia Airport Gateway Project.
Golden says Haas&Hahn are on MAP's dream list of artists. "We're philosophically aligned. They're colorists with a background in architecture," says Golden. Kickoff is September 27 with a welcome reception. The entire project is set to last 18 months, including training and pop-up studios throughout the city. At its conclusion, a major exhibition is planned, which will also span Philadelphia and is slated for late 2013 to early 2014.
Source: Jane Golden, Philadelphia Mural Arts Program
Writer: Sue Spolan