A arte de uma margem distante: O “Festival de Artes Pão e Tinta” na favela do Pina (2015 – 2022)

Abstract

The International Bread and Paint Arts Festival has been held annually since 2012 in the Pina Favela, in Recife, Pernambuco. The event opens a public selection every year to welcome graffiti artists, musicians, and volunteers who typically engage for five days in a kind of "arts carnival," featuring street graffiti, concerts, and social actions such as hairdressing, braiding, and turban tying, among others. As an independent cultural production, it was conceived as an alternative for the youth of Pina, working on the revitalization of public spaces in the community, thus becoming our main tool in defense of our territory, threatened by real estate speculation. Art emerges from one of Recife's most neglected areas by the government and breaks through the statistics as an alternative for young people to envision a future away from violence, drugs, and crime. With this article, we aim to construct an experiential narrative that problematizes and questions the importance of this activity within a reality of exclusive public institutionalization of artistic/cultural spaces only in the elitized areas of Recife City, demonstrating that peripheral organizations already fulfill this role, addressing this deficit with little or no resources.