A different kind of feast, equally rich, is on offer in “Street Heroines,” an exploration of women graffiti artists. Filming over several years in the boroughs of New York and also in various parts of Latin America, director and producer Alexandra Henry aims to lift up work at the margins of the margins \u2014 women who brave physical danger and legal jeopardy to produce remarkable feats of beauty, wit, and vision.<\/p>\n
Though their work may only live in physical reality for a short while and then only in photographs, these remarkable women pass along profound insights about what drives them to create, what it costs them, and what they mean to communicate.<\/p>\n
If you realize that much of the deepest wisdom resides at the margins, you know to be grateful that Henry went to the effort to open space for these voices and their work. The film’s feminist sensibility is especially inspiring \u2014 several of the women recount stories of men not being able to compute that they created their art, even after watching them create it, or telling them they can’t work in this medium because they are women.<\/p>\n
They climb bridges and rooftops and fend off street harassment and hostility in terrible neighborhoods; it turns out that “spray paint is a very, very good weapon,” one of them says. To the insistence that “You can’t climb that ladder because you’re a girl,” one artist retorted, “What? You need a penis to climb that ladder? Does it help you hold on?”<\/p>\n
The chance to glimpse parts of Latin America through the lens of female graffiti artists is particularly rich. They locate their work inside Mexico City’s long tradition of mural artist bursting with colorful energy \u2014 in a museum or on the street, “it’s an obsession for cultural and artistic expression.” We get a tutorial on varieties of street lettering in Sao Paolo, and lessons on the juxtapositions of advertisements with graffiti, a nice house situated next to one that is falling apart, the politics of public art that contains the street’s fast-moving energy and is accessible to everyone.<\/p>\n
Many of the artists speak about the importance of street art \u2014 created on the street by women \u2014 in inspiring children, especially girls, to create art of their own. Brazilian artists speak especially profoundly about creating in grimy spaces, without asking for permission, as a sort of spiritual act of defiance.<\/p>\n
And many of these women speak beautifully about the power of creating work outside and watching its effect on people.<\/p>\n
“I am a troubled woman, so I paint troubled woman,” said one artist. “I want the world to know that everything is not OK. If you think everything is OK, what world are you living in?”<\/p>\n
I won’t be surprised if this film ends up being one of my favorites this year. The art dazzles and challenges, and so do the artists.<\/p>\n