Cripta Djan
Cripta Djan (1984) is from the city of São Paulo. He is a pixador (practicing a local form of tagging) and a visual artist. Djan is one of the leaders of the group Os + Fortes (The Strongest), a collective formed around the practice of pixação (“aggressive tagging”) in different Brazilian cities. His political and artistic activities have earned him the attention of documentary filmmakers such as the brothers Roberto T. Oliveira and João Wainer, and Amir Arsanes, as well as invitations to participate in numerous visual arts exhibits, including at the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010), The Cartier Foundation (2009) and the Berlin Biennial (2012).
Pixação is not like the painting of colorful murals—graffiti—throughout the city. Quite the opposite: we use black ink to challenge the power dynamics in the city and the current social order. The pixador engages in the practice as a response to spatial segregation in the city by writing on any of its surfaces without prior authorization.
