July 22, 2008 1:35 PM PDT
Artist Alexandre Orion used the low-tech tools of rags and water to convey his political message. He scraped off soot from walls to draw skulls in a more than 350-foot span of the Max Feffer Tunnel of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in July 2006. The following month, he said city officials censored the work by cleaning only the part of the tunnel featuring the reverse graffiti. After the artist returned to carve skulls from the remaining dirty walls, officials cleaned the rest of the tunnel. Next, city workers scrubbed the walls of all of Sao Paulo's tunnels, which Orion said became blanketed in grime again within four months.
"Cleaning is not a crime," Orion wrote on his Web site about the Art Less Pollution project. "What is a crime is environmental damage caused by unashamed pollution...It would be better to stop polluting instead of cleaning up."
Photo by Ossario/ Art Less Pollution project
Caption by Elsa Wenzel
