(8 Jul 2019) STORY
Freshly painted street art by local and international artists adorns numerous walls in Yekaterinburg.
The Russian city is host to Stenograffia, the country's largest street art festival.
Do not adjust your set, this homage to YouTube is part of a street art festival in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.
Twenty new art works grace walls and buildings across the city, painted by artists from countries including Russia, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Now in its tenth year, the street art festival spans themes from the way art relates to social media, optical illusions to the blending of historical and contemporary art styles.
Spanish graffiti artist Ampparito created a giant mural imitating a YouTube "play" button on the outside of a building in a residential area.
Photographed or filmed from a certain angle, the button on the building in the yard looks like its digital counterpart, tempting people to "push" the button in images of the art work posted on social media.
Ampparito says he wants to "play with" the fact that "street art in our times is so connected with social media.
When we see something, we try to share it with other people, and we share it with social media.
Basically, we take pictures of everything", he adds.
Optical illusions are a popular theme among participants of the festival.
Ampparito says they help to make a "powerful point of street art", which is to subvert the utilitarianist approach people can sometimes have to public spaces:
"Normally people think that everything has to be useful or needs to have some purpose, but when you hack that thing like this, (they think) what is this for?", he says.
The festival's organiser, Konstantin Rakhmanov, says the annual event is also an opportunity for artists to promote their work to a wider audience.
"Everyone wants to develop and enjoy it, therefore artists like such events, because here you can realize your potential," he says.
Getting the approval of local authorities and residents has not always been easy, Rakhmanov recounts.
"The first four years were very difficult for us as organizers, that is, all this needs to be agreed with the residents, owners of buildings and surfaces.
At that moment (in time) they did not understand what it was, why they needed it, and we talked with them for so long, defended some projects, with the administration it was the same.
Now the owners themselves come to us, show us their sites, asking that they be painted, preferably in an interesting, bright way."
And international artists make a point of integrating local knowledge into the art they leave behind after the festival.
Benjamin Nast from Germany, says his team adapted their initial sketch with details they heard from local people.
Their picture - a mural encouraging to build bridges, not walls - includes architectural elements of Yekaterinburg as well as Cologne, Berlin and Dusseldorf, the latter being where the artists are from.
"We had conversations to people here on site, and they said, for example, this building looks not exactly the same like it is here in Yekaterinburg and Uralmash (district), so can you change it a little bit.
Located in a densely populated part of the city, the painting has not escaped the attention of residents such as Faina Valeeva, who says she was excited about the artistic addition to her neighbourhood, which she says is "something incredible" and "very beautiful."
At another site, one graffiti painting resurrects the past by invoking the image of a renaissance fresco.
This is quite a serious step in the development of street art in our country."
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