Urban monumental creation

In the heart of the “favelas” – the shantytowns - of São Paulo, the artist Mônica Nador, born in 1955, maintains solid ties with the local population so as to give them a share of her work. She does not paint for a caste or an isolated group, but with and among the inhabitants of these underprivileged districts; "to offer the individuals to perceive the contemporary practice of painting, like a territory without boundaries or hierarchy.” She differentiates herself from the official artistic circuit. This artist trained in drawing and engraving at the Faculty of Visual Arts of the Alvares Penteado Foundation then at the School of Arts of the University of São Paulo, assumes her choices and carries on her own pictorial research. She invites the inhabitants-artists to renew the artistic approach in relation to their houses and their environment. Initiated into the stencil technique, they take possession of these places using motifs inspired by their personal history and their everyday life.On the exterior or the interior walls, art colours, art livens life up, art conquers new territories. The reception tower of the Festival will be covered with the new work of Mônica Nador and four young men from the “favelas” of São Paulo.Moreover, more than 1000 young people from different districts of Toulouse imprint their mark on the scenography of the Prairie des Filtres within the framework of an artistic project developed since February with Mônica Nador.