Urban Webs: Poetry and visual arts take to the streets of the capital of Amazonas

The project took as its starting point the approach and mixture of artistic languages, using literature and illustrations to compose the interventions.

For two weeks now, an artistic occupation project has been making applications in open spaces throughout the zones of Manaus. The project Urban Webs comes with the proposal to transform some specific places in the city and also the look of the manauara citizen about his own birthplace.

The project had as a starting point the approximation and mixture of artistic languages, using literature and illustrations to compose the interventions. The idea is to weave the city's daily life together with its conventional landscape.

"Urban Webs arose from a concern of mine in relation to the flow of my texts. Some friends encouraged me to seek incentives for this production and through this I integrated these artistic languages to set up the project, I invited artists I admire and who I believed would make the perfect composition for the work," said Rafael Cesar, the creator and responsible for the poems that make up the project. He brought to his company the plastic artists Ingrid Gonçalves and Francisco Ricardo as illustrators, and has as Production Director the visual artist Keila Serruya.

The visual art and literary art of the three artists provoke a reflection about the urban experience in Manaus, from the point of view of each one of them. It is important to emphasize that the texts were not sent to the artists to be illustrated, but so that the artists could use the texts to compose their works, some of them already finished, others in process or the free creation of new illustrations.

"At the first contact with the texts I already felt very instigated to create works related to what was written. A form of personification of feelings and ideals that some poems gave", comments artist Ingrid Gonçalves.

"I was very happy to be in the Urban Webs. It is an opportunity for my work to leave the galleries, to get in touch with a different public, and to notice the city's reaction", adds artist Francisco Ricardo.

The project was awarded the Manauscult 2017 Cultural Connections award, during the month of March and has already passed through the South and East zones of the capital. During the weekends it will compose new scenarios in urban everyday life until the end of April. At the closing of the occupation process these poems and illustrations will be gathered through the publication of a book, with a date still to be set in the month of June.

"Being able to consume and observe the city has been pleasurable. It is a challenge to be in these places, to be in a respectful way, to occupy without invading these spaces and to remember that the city is ours," concludes artist Rafael Cesar.

Next to the applications, passersby will be able to see the #teiasurbanas2019 that redirects to social networks and digital works. The project should circulate through the areas of Manaus until the end of April, and in June a poetry-book that also accompanies the illustrations will be released.

More information on the site http://urbanosteias.wixsite.com/teiasurbanas.

With information from assessorship.