District 13 Urban Art Fair: Already an Institution

It's been around for over forty years, but where exactly is street art today? What does this generic name represent? We now talk increasingly of "urban art", indicating the subtle change of vocabulary needed to cover a many-faceted reality. With contextual and conceptual practices, graffiti, Punk rock inspired stencils, collages, muralism, subverted ads, ''artivism'' and ''hacktivism'', it has proved far too diverse to be really described as a movement… In any event, it is a means of expression that has spread throughout the world, while remaining very open, as we are told by Erica Berkowitz of the Haven Gallery (Northport), who is taking part in the 2019 edition: "Our artists can't be defined by a category of genre, because they are fired by a multitude of subcultures coloured by the influences of art history and popular cultures." This is illustrated to perfection by Zoé Byland's work. Girl and Bird out of Focus (€3,500), an image inspired by the history of photography, "makes play with the duality between darkness and light in a monochrome painting, focus and out-of-focus, the spray can and acrylic paint." It is important to ask questions about this vague designation of "street art" to grasp the positioning…