So after posting the video last night of Alexandre Orion talking in Portuguese about his work. Our friend t.w., sat down and did a translation of it…

Thanks t.w!

here it goes:

Sao Paulo brasil

my name is alexandre orion. i was born and live in sao paulo brasil. my life and my work were always related to art. i made and sold hand printed tshirts, i worked as a tattoo artist, i made several things related to drawing since early age. my involvement with graffiti started when i was 14 y.old doing a kind of graffiti related to hip hop culture and at the same time i worked as an illustrator, graphic designer, in a publishing agency and then i started to work with photography, researching and studying it. I feel in love with photography and that was a step towards my project metabiotics that i show here.

technique:
i tried not to do with my art something that is is tied to techniques/technical aspects. i have an idea and try to see what i need to execute this idea and then i apply the the technique so ican achieve the results i want. in the metabiotics project the idea is: i choose a place in the city that i believe an intervention can happen. usually i think of an intervention and choose a place in the city or a place offers me an idea for an intervention. something very curious in the process is the “waiting moment”. the interventions are made with stencil graffiti and in the waiting moment each situation is a new situation and always people adds something interesting to my work. always something that i could not imagine would happen and then i register with my camera. that is the moment the work gains power and i loose control of it. the image of the guy holding up a gun was the first of the project and i did not have great expectation of what the image would give me. so, i did the stencil and in the same day i got my camera and waited for the situation. then this older man showed up, looked at the painting, looked at me and lift both of his arms and asked me if he was disturbing me or the art. i got so nervous with my legs shaking and did not believe the perfect situation (him with his arms up and the stencil of the guy pointing the gun) that i could not take the picture. By the time i did he had lowered his arms but his expressions were still strong.

illegal:

this style of graffiti you see here is a type of graf that is getting strength in brasil and people are respecting it and it almost turns itself into something legal. it is not as dangerous like it was years ago. but even being an illegal act, the police does not arrest or want to punish you. sometimes they try but it ended up not working.

future:

the objective of my life i i think of the future is not get stuck in just one thing. what i like to do for my future is to do what i like, what is not something selfish. what i like is to do things that i see that people like. i want to keep working in this project, in this medium or any other like musical, sculptural but i want to be sure that i am entering people’s life and that i am giving space, opening space for them to get in my life so we can create something or a world or an idea of a world that could appear to be or be better than the one we have. that is it.

cheers, paula (aka t.w.)