ART IS TRASH

About Art Is Trash

Art Is Trash is the street-art identity of Spanish artist Francisco de Pájaro, an artist closely associated with Barcelona's independent urban-art scene.

Rather than limiting his work to traditional canvases and galleries, Art Is Trash became known for transforming materials abandoned in the city into spontaneous works of art. Cardboard boxes, discarded furniture, mattresses, rubbish bags and other unwanted objects can suddenly become characters, creatures and temporary urban sculptures.

The Art Is Trash project developed in Barcelona around 2009. The streets provided Francisco de Pájaro with something completely different from a conventional exhibition space: immediacy, freedom and direct interaction with people moving through the city.

Improvisation is central to his artistic practice. Instead of starting with a finished composition, the artist responds to objects, materials and situations that already exist in the urban environment. A discarded box or broken piece of furniture can become the starting point for a completely new character or scene.

This approach also makes many Art Is Trash works deliberately ephemeral. An intervention can appear on a Barcelona street and disappear again when the city's rubbish is collected. Photography and social media therefore become important ways of documenting artworks that may physically exist for only a short time.

Behind the humorous, grotesque and sometimes chaotic characters is often an element of social criticism. Waste, consumer culture, inequality, the traditional art establishment and everyday city life can all become part of the visual language of Art Is Trash.

Materials that society has rejected are temporarily given a new identity. Instead of remaining invisible as rubbish, they become characters that confront pedestrians directly in public space.

Barcelona is particularly important to the story of Art Is Trash. The city's streets and neighbourhoods provided an environment where temporary interventions could become part of everyday urban life rather than objects separated from the public inside a gallery.

The project has subsequently travelled beyond Barcelona, with Francisco de Pájaro creating urban interventions in other cities and bringing the spontaneous Art Is Trash approach to different public environments.

Urban Arts News documents selected works, Instagram posts and stories connected with Art Is Trash, helping create a digital record of an artistic practice whose physical works are often temporary by nature.