Muralist, painter, and political artist Rico, 23, will conduct a slide show and talk at Children’s Park Auditorium as part of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012 outreach programme on Sunday.
The talk will be followed by an interactive session.
Rigo alias Ricardo Gouveia, belongs to the Portuguese island of Madeira. His style of using everyday symbols and straightforward graphics tends to be simple and direct, the possible messages and issues of his work are anything but that.
His art aims at mentioning the invisible; to make light of things that are all around us, but often go unseen. It is this questioning of our realities and offering opportunities for social dialogue and examination that makes his murals so powerful. His projects with American political prisoners Geronimo Ji Jaga (Pratt), an ex-Black Panther exonerated after serving 27 years in prison, and Leonard Peltier, a native American artist and activist who many consider unjustly imprisoned since 1977, are noted.
Rigo established himself as an artist in San Francisco, earning a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 1991 and an MFA from Stanford University in 1997. He is known in the San Francisco community for his ‘one way’ sign murals, such as the ‘One Tree’ mural on the US-101 onramp at 10th and Bryant Streets.
He is one of the founding members of Clarion Alley Mural Project collective.