Face Time – Wir

The title translates roughly as: We all here belong to the community.

It is the second mural of it‘s kind departing from the same series which started in 2014 and you can compare how the series developed since.

An art workshop with the local youth center took place in advance, where the youngsters made collages and were also invited to take portrait photos of each other which were then incorporated into the sketch. The idea is, that together, these individual elements form a collective face of the neighborhood, which creates a sense of belonging and maybe even pride in the diversity of the area.

In this mural, Various & Gould’s typical signature of halftone dots steps into focus through the new aspect of distortion.

To kick off the mural and transfer the motif, the artists scribbled with brushes countless first names on the blank wall. These were first names of participants from a preceding art workshop and other people they had met.
Additionally many kids and also adults from the neighborhood gathered in small bunches at the wall and called out their first names up to where the artists were working in the lift: “Write my name!” 

This way, the message “We all belong here” literally became part of the picture. Various & Gould were able to get to know a few of the local residents, and they in turn developed a very concrete connection to the mural.

This mural was created for Urban Nation Museum / Stiftung Berliner Leben and is part of their One Wall series, curated by Michelle C. Houston.