From my last encounter with the Parisian stencil artist I got a taste for his underlying love of shoeshinners. Little did I know that this would manifest itself into its own show. In his own words “I have met many street shoe-shiners during my trips around the world. They represent the lower class of urban workers. Almost beggars, they construct their boxes from light and cheap material, just one handmade box containing brushes and creams offering a job that less and less people need. When they get a customer, the working dynamic turns into a humiliating symbol – one bending before the other, polishing his shoes, while the superior one gets annoyed or bored, looking around. Shoe-shining, in French, gave birth to numerous ways of describing flattery: “polishing”, “shining”, “boots-licker”… The lost pride of real street shoe-shiners is easy to encompass with such words, but are we not all discretely licking arses everyday to promote ourselves?” More photos after the Jump.
C215 ‘Shoeshiners’ Show at the Signal Gallery runs from 19thJune – 11th July 2009.
Signal Gallery.
96a Curtain Road,
Hoxton,
London. EC2A 3AA
http://www.signalgallery.com/exhibitions.htm
http://www.signalgallery.com/c212shoe.htm
