Faces of the world

We Are All One: Brazilian graffiti artist paints massive Olympic mural.

PERCHED atop a cherry picker truck several stories high, Brazilian graffiti artist Eduardo Kobra sprays puffs of paint on a sprawling mural in the colours of the Olympic rings.

With two weeks to go to the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, Kobra and his assistants are racing to put the finishing touches on the 3,000sq m painting that graces a wall in the city’s newly overhauled port district.

The mural depicts five indigenous faces representing the continents of the world, awash in the blue, yellow, black, green and red of the Olympics.

Thailand’s Karen people represent Asia, the Huli of Papua New Guinea represent Oceania, the Tapajos of the Brazilian Amazon represent the Americas, the Chukchi of Siberia represent Europe and the Mursi of Ethiopia represent Africa.

“There is growing intolerance in the world,” said Kobra, 40, of the motivation behind the work.

“Look at Europe, where people are rejecting refugees, rejecting what is different. I hope this mural, in the Olympic spirit, will help remind us that we are all different but all one: the human race.”

Kobra and his team spent 15 days preparing the former shipyard wall by plugging its holes and painting it white.

For the past week, they have been working 11 hours a day to cover the wall – about half the size of a football pitch – in spray paint, acrylic and varnish.

They have already used 2,000 bottles of spray paint, 200 litres of acrylic and 100 cans of varnish, says Kobra, who grew up tagging walls in a hardscrabble neighborhood of Sao Paulo called Campo Lindo.

From the age of 12 years old, “the street was my way to socialise, have fun and also protest against social exclusion”, he said.

Today, he does graffiti “only with permission”, he said.

His current work, called “We Are All One”, is sponsored by the Rio 2016 organising committee and city hall.

His goal is to finish it several days before the Aug 5 opening ceremony – in time for the thousands of tourists and athletes expected to descend on the city’s iconic waterfront. – AFP

— Photos: AFP ‘ there is growing intolerance in the world,’ says Kobra of the motivation behind the work.

— EPA ‘ the street was my way to socialise, have fun and also protest against social exclusion,’ says Kobra, posing in front of a mural he painted in rio de Janeiro.

Assistants to Kobra working on the painting of a huge mural representing the five continents at the Olympic Boulevard in rio de Janeiro.

— EPA the new mural, dubbed We Are All One and which covers the entire front wall of an abandoned parking lot in the port of rio de Janeiro, portrays the faces of five indigenous individuals, one for each continent.

Before the splash of colour, Kobra and his team spent 15 days preparing the former shipyard wall by plugging its holes and painting it white.

to date, 2,000 bottles of spray paint, 200 litres of acrylic and 100 cans of varnish have been used on this graffiti project, says Kobra.