UNDER/OVER. Urban Art: from the street to the museum, round trip
In Siena an unprecedented exhibition to retrace the evolution of street art, from its underground beginnings to a protagonist of the international contemporary scene. An artistic expression that was born from the street and has been able to conquer the spaces of institutional art, without ever forgetting its origins.
The evolution of street art on display
From the street to the museum, from station trains to the world’s most important galleries: no artistic phenomenon like street art has undergone such a significant evolution, managing to establish itself in the official art system. From June to September 2024, an exhibition at the Santa Maria della Scala Museum Complex in Siena – curated by Patrizia Cattaneo Moresi and Michelina Simona Eremita and organized in collaboration with 24 ORE Cultura – traced this extraordinary parabola through the works of more than 30 artists.
Big international names such as Banksy, Obey, JR and OSGEMEOS, as well as the most interesting exponents of the Italian and European scene including Blu, Madame, OZMO; these are some of the artists involved in this exhibition that traces the history of the art movement from tags and illegal graffiti on New York subway trains to its transformation into a global phenomenon capable of imposing itself in the institutional art market and influencing fashion, culture and society.
Contributing to the uniqueness of the exhibition was the choice of exhibition context: the recently restored spaces of the Santa Maria della Scala Museum Complex, which overlook an ancient medieval street. The past and the present meet in a surprising play of cross-references: the rooms carved out of a subway street ideally recall the subway world of New York subways, where street art originated, creating a parallelism between two seemingly distant eras.
A palimpsest of live performances and talks allowed visitors to immerse themselves in the culture associated with this movement and see the street artists at work in some site-specific interventions. The finissage event, organized together with the Santa Rosa School in Florence, involved all interested citizens in a session of drawing from life in total freedom and expressive autonomy. It was a way to remember the close link between individual creativity and the collective dimension that characterizes the essence of street art, a movement born from below and still capable of involving transversal audiences.
