Geen Titel, 2016

Sivanski (Netherlands)
Sonsbeek ’16, Café Bosch (formerly: Café Brigant), Arnhem

On the right side of a building at least three stories high, there is a large mural. This mural depicts the face of a woman. She has some sort of collar and long dark green hair. She has two pairs of eyes positioned just below one another. The open eyes have no pupils. There are also floral motifs, with a large hand in the center. The index and middle fingers are raised. — *Photographer: Maurice Boyer*

For many residents of Arnhem, a visit to Café Bosch feels like a journey back to the 1980s. At that time, the iconic building was in the hands of Arnhem’s squatter movement, and the exterior wall of Hotel Rembrandt, the building diagonally opposite, was covered with activist graffiti.

In 2016, the wall of Café Bosch was finally transformed—this time by the Arnhem-based illustrator and tattoo artist Sivanski. For Sonsbeek ’16, Sivanski traded soft skin for hard concrete. What happens when a tattoo artist begins to interpret urban surfaces as human skin? The sometimes cold and somewhat distant city becomes slightly more accessible, warmer. Sivanski’s murals can best be described as a playful combination of figurative and abstract elements. Just five minutes from this mural is a second mural by Sivanski, also created for Sonsbeek ’16, located along the Jan van Dommeringpad.

Geen Titel, 2016

Inleiding