The struggle for the right to the city through street art in Curitiba, PR

Abstract

Contemporary street art has its origin in the 1970’s in New York, intrinsically connected to the hip hop culture, which was also responsible for the emergence of such artistic expressions in Brazil. With its own local singularities, it can be understood nowadays as a hybrid artistic genre, with two main inherent contradictions: the duality between graffiti and pichação and its political and territorial nature. The present paper is the result of a master studies concluded in 2016, based on the following methods of investigation: bibliographic review, fieldworks, photographic recording, documentary analysis and interviews. Using a critical approach to the analysis, it was possible to identify characteristics that feature the struggle to the right to the city. Therefore it is understood that street art can be dialectally considered as a transformation practice towards a radically different society.