Double Take - Os Gemeos

Writer: Damian Platt

In a taxi stuck in a busy square in downtown São Paulo, you look above the cars in an attempt to glimpse the sky. Curled across the roof of a twenty-storey office block is an enormous sartorially dressed boy. Hands and feet clasped like a baby, hair neatly brushed, his yellow face contemplates the city. According to Os Gemeos (The Twins), featured artists at the Urbis Gallery Ill Communications Street Art exhibition, he was very difficult to paint. It took weeks of patient observation of the building until they devised a plan allowing them to get to the roof. They then worked at night, before descending and disappearing unnoticed into the streets.

One of the world's largest cities, São Paulo is disorientating and difficult to describe. A maze of roads, tunnels, skyscrapers and traffic, it is cosmopolitan, energetic and noisy, afflicted by chronic poverty and violence. The buildings on the horizon stretch on forever. Os Gemeos, who are becoming known as two of the world's most prolific and original graffiti artists, live and paint here. They describe it as a disordered city, “in a geographical sense, in an aesthetic sense, in the sense of organisation”. It is the home from where they set out on artistic expeditions every few months, for in the past year they have painted in Cuba and Greece, as well as Manchester.

More than just their base, São Paulo is their own public gallery. Hundreds of their paintings are scattered across town - fantastic scenes occupy the entirety of giant walls next to eight lane artery routes, mischievous characters lurch out of side streets, and expressionless faces keep watch over the rooftops. It is also one of the few cities in the world that can claim to have its own unique strain of graffiti. It derives largely from “Pixação” (pronounce Pee-sha-sow), spindly signatures that cover buildings in a spider's web of Gothic lettering. Youth and gangs from all across the metropolis write pixação, competing for space, and adhering strictly to the ancient graffiti maxim of “More”. There is so much pixação that in order for it to stand out it must be painted high on the sides of buildings, where only the fearless can reach, often ten stories above the road or more. Places where through sheer cunning and determination someone has found their way up to balance on a ledge and etch their name into São Paulo's folklore.

Pixação, Os Gemeos say, originated in the 1980s, and was written by middle class and lower middle class teenage rock fans from the ABC, São Paulo's industrial suburbs, who had no knowledge of hip hop. The practice of pixação, in which the act of writing is almost as important as the finished product, has strongly influenced their outlook. They emphasise that in these days of formulaic, copycat graffiti, São Paulo is one of the few places in the world that still defends its own indigenous style. The twins root this in the resourcefulness that is necessary to get by in a third world environment, “as you haven't got money you have to improvise. Anything you can use to write on a wall, you'll use it to write graffiti, and you end up using a different language”.

And that language is constantly evolving. Os Gemeos have created a galaxy of faces, characters, scenes and letters with which to tell their story. And they admit that although their paintings might belong to São Paulo, they are driven by their own artistic urges. “We paint because we need to paint, and we chose the city to paint. We paint our world, what's in our heads, things that only he and I know, no one else. There are lots of people who think they know, but they don't. To see one of their paintings as you rush about your business is to enjoy a sudden, unexpected flash of understanding. For an instant the soul of the city is laid bare, and then the traffic moves forwards, and São Paulo returns to its indecipherable and chaotic routine.