I am very pleased to write to you and participate again in an edition of CCC`s Street Art Contest that
organizes every week.
CCC`s Street Art Contest Round 117
Generally, I avoid bringing two weeks in a row works by the same artist. However, this week I have the internal obligation to bring back another work by Bastian Prendes that I found by chance in a town 8 kilometers from my mother's house (Navia-Asturias-Spain) and that I usually frequent on weekends.
In the vicinity of the municipal soccer field of Navia in recent years have been held various urban art competitions bringing together both Spanish artists and artists from other parts of Europe, providing this small town a great museum of urban art. For reasons that I have not yet explained, I had not heard about the celebration of these competitions in this town and, therefore, I did not know the beautiful works that are there for everyone's access.
As far as I could document, one of the main themes of the contests held there was gender violence against women. In Spain, as you can see in the following screenshot, the number of women murdered by their partners or ex-partners is alarming and therefore the city council of Navia proposed to hold an urban art contest where the different artists could capture in their works a message of rejection towards this type of violence.
Ministerial web page on gender violence
The winning urban art mural in 2019 on the theme of gender violence was a mural made in the spray technique by the Oviedo muralist Bastian Prendes. The work is titled "Rupture" in clear allusion to the need for a break on the part of battered women with their aggressors and also for the break that society has to make in the face of fear to intervene when a woman is being subjected to this type of violence.
Focusing on the mural, we can see a smiling woman with the body of a bird. In Greek mythology such beings were called harpies. One of the missions associated with harpies was to punish Phineus, although in this case what we see is that she has punished a wolf to stay away from her while she is flying with wings of freedom.
The explanation I find for leaving a wolf, I see it in that this animal in Greek mythology was also associated with Apollo. Apollo, besides being the god of beauty and perfection, was also associated with the god of sudden death, plagues and diseases. So, this wolf may represent this disease that is in many men who throw their violence against their partners or ex-partners.
I hope in the coming weeks to bring you some murals that caught my attention on this issue of gender violence and other murals that were recently made on literature and science fiction in this town.
I hope you like my contribution to the contest.
Regards.
Own photograph taken with my Iphone SE.
Cover and separators has been created with www.canva.com (free version)
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version).