The art in urban space: Visual narratives

Abstract

Urban art has taken on the role of recognized value in the context of big cities. It is not only an expression of emerging and minority cultures, but also a vehicle of cultural policies that seek to produce new experiences in the production of senses in urban spaces, with the public and for the public it interacts with. A new cycle of urban art generation allows the performance and recognition of artists and audience as agents of the production of new routes and scenarios. This paper aims at exploring the eff ects of such new visual rhetoric in the composition of metaphors and contemporary allegories as expression and in symbolic meaning, in the semantization of the relations between mankind and its environment. It aggregates media as a part of the narratives. Contemporary themes and practices that represent a sustainable way of life that highlights nature in the urban space and the desired dialogue were chosen. The narrative matrix is developed under: (a) entertainment, present in the many ways of manifestation; and (b) social criticism that is expressed through graffiti and urban installations, producing irony or pure reflection.

Keywords: arts, city, nature, metaphor, narrative.