Chromazone Festival, Minnesota’s first & largest public mural & art festival kicks off this weekend. Over the course of the festival 12 large outdoor murals will be created in St Paul’s premier creative hub by 15 mural artists. Biafra Inc is one of the Artists featured on the line up for the festival.
Biafra hadn’t planned on being an artist. He thought he was going to be a teacher. He started cutting stencils as a way to decorate his skateboard in 2003. Cutting stencils quickly turned into an obsession, suddenly the stencils were on stickers and walls and that transitioned into an interest in graffiti and screen printing. He switched my major from education to art and received a B.F.A. with an emphasis in printmaking from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He has been lucky enough to take what he has learned and obsessed about for all these years and turn that into a job.
His work is text heavy and hard lines. He uses comic book characters because he thinks they are instantly relatable to every generation and represent an idealistic time. The text surrounding the characters gives clues as to what the character represents. The bold lines and bright colors associated graffiti and street art still stick with him. He uses his murals as an extension of his fine art. He can do a print and a mural of the same character and each application allows me to explore the character and themes in a different way. The scale of a mural can deliver a feeling that the intimacy of a print can’t and he loves exploring that experience.
We checked in with Biafra ahead of the festival for a quick update.
Hi Bifra, how did you get the chance to be involved with Chroma Zone Festival?
I heard about Chroma Zone this spring and applied right away. I think we’ve all wanted to see something like this happen in the Twin Cities for a long time.
Do you have a theme in mind for your mural? What do you have planned?
My wall is a good size, so I’m trying to make the most of the space I’ve been given. The content for my wall is centered around interactions in 2019. I think we as a society have continued to polarize ourselves and ideas into our own camps and we are slowly starting to sink. Nobody listens to each other, everyone’s just mad. We are watching ourselves deteriorate. My wall is a reflection on that feeling. The wall depicts a giant lady’s face watching a ship sink in the reflection on her glasses.
How do you like to describe your work?
I like to describe my work as narrative painting. I like to paint big comic characters with bright colors and big letters. I really enjoy making art that is bright, poppy and fun but when you look further into it the message is much more somber than it initially lets on.
How are you going with your preparation? What excites you most about participating in the festival?
Preparations are going well. I’ve got the sketch finished and paint picked. I’m about to use a whole bunch of Roarke Black haha. I’m really excited about the scale of these walls. We have a few bigger murals in the Twin Cities, but this event is going to set a whole new precedent.
Are there any comments you’d like to add or anything extra you’d like people to know?
If you’re in Minnesota or a neighboring state you should definitely try to come by and check it out. I think everyone here knows what an event like this means for our area. For a long time Twin Cities residents have been fairly skittish when it came to murals. We’ve had a few jams more recently and people have been pretty receptive, but I think this event will crack that wide open.
Web: biafrainc.com
Instagram: @biafrainc