Three artists, three perspectives on Bordeaux
For its street art, its exhibitions in public spaces or for its photogenic nature, Bordeaux is the perfect arena for art. We met three artists who use Bordeaux as a canvas.
A-MO’S STREET ART
Originally from Brittany, A-MO moved to Bordeaux, “the city of his heart”, around fifteen years ago. Having begun to make street art in his late teenage years, he honed his art in Bordeaux, where he discovered the hiphop movement. “To be able to paint in the street, that’s the essence of what I do: bringing an artistic touch to the public domain for free, taking art out of its elitist circle, that’s what motivates me”.
Self-taught, A-MO started using stencils (one from 2013 still remains on a letter box at Place Gambetta) before turning to what he calls “paintagging”, trying to spread his large paintings of colourful animals - his trademark - across the Gironde capital.
Examples of his work are the gorilla on Rue des Ayres, the fox on Place du Palais, the kingfisher on Place du Maucaillou in the Saint-Michel quarter and the toucan on Rue de la Vieille Tour. A stroll around Bordeaux looking for A-MO’s creations is like walking in an urban jungle!
Nowadays, having entered Bernard Magrez’s prestigious private collection in 2016, the soon-to-be 40 year-old doesn’t plan on stopping painting in the street. “I should say that I only paint on walls that are in disrepair, I’d never dream of painting on Bordeaux stone. Bordeaux truly is a very beautiful city, I don’t want to deface it”, the artist clarifies. After animals, he’s setting his sights on the mythological, namely chimeras.
Nico Pulcrano, architecture of facades
Nico Pulcrano moved to Bordeaux 13 years ago and made his mark on the local arts milieu as a photographer working on the music scene. He started as creator of the music schedule listing Bordeaux Concerts, then became a photographer for Le Krakatoa, where he snapped artists and became specialised in portraits. However, this self-taught artist is just as keen on facades as he is on faces.
“For a long time I’d wanted to photograph Bordeaux, it’s a city that I love very much. But, as a photographer, it isn’t the city of stone that interests me”.
Indeed, Nico Pulcrano got noticed for his frontal snaps of buildings, framed looking upwards to the sky: on the left bank in the Mériadeck district and the MÉCA building on Paludate, on the right bank he snapped the La Benauge residences and the Niel barracks. “I’m a fan of brutalism, of soviet architecture, I’m particularly fond of parallels, symmetry and repetitive schematics”.
These photos show it: through Nico Pulcrano’s lens, we see a new beauty in Mériadeck’s architecture, as if he has managed to capture all the buildings’ full strangeness and force. In 2020, his work was exhibited on the railings of Le Jardin des Dames de la Foi in Saint-Genès. The exhibition was organised at the request of ‘Le Labo révélateur d’image’ - a
member association of La Fabrique Pola - and was called “Facade Therapy”.
Nadia Russell Kissoon, art curator
After a few years spent teaching art, the Bordeauxbred Nadia Russell Kissoon decided to move into curating exhibitions, but of a new kind. In fact, she never wanted to work in a traditional gallery, her dream was to bring art directly to the people. To that end, in 2007, she created her first Tinbox: a large red wooden box, 2m x 2m, with a window panel that allowed her to exhibit work by contemporary artists in the public space
“I really wanted to get people closer to contemporary art. The issue of cultural rights particularly interests me and, having personal experience with this issue, I knew that the art domain was prisoner to its own norms. The Tinbox was a way of questioning art’s place in society”.
In the same vein, in 2020, she founded L’Agence Créative, the guiding principle of which was to “take art everywhere possible, always in a respectful manner”. Artistic residencies, projects with the ministry for education, impromptu events and 6 more Tinboxes later (including a mini, backpack-sized one), Nadia Russell Kissoon believes that art is in tune with the real world. That is why, for the last few years, she has worked particularly closely with artists who deal with ecological issues.