Year of Publication

2025

College

Undergraduate Education

Abstract

Pixação, a distinct and marginalized form of public expression native to Brazil, serves as a complex medium for urban communication, encompassing protest, entertainment, and the quest for recognition. This research project investigates how pixo—a tagging style characterized by its cryptic blackletter, angular, and violent typography—transforms urban landscapes in São Paulo. Unlike North American tagging, which is often concerned with ornamentation, pixo is structurally oriented and often executed at great heights on buildings and overpasses, embodying a practice of risk that seeks visibility and acknowledgment within a socio-political-spatial context. This study posits that pixo serves a dual purpose: it is both an artistic endeavor and a form of transgression against governmental efforts to eradicate it. While authorities often label pixo as vandalism, it represents a unique linguistic contribution to urban communication, encapsulating the lived experiences of its creators. The project included a six-week visit to São Paulo to compile materials for future study and visual manipulation. This exploration focused on diverse and experimental visual representations of pichação, aiming to articulate the many facets of its cultural significance and inherent genius. Furthermore, the research examines how pixo alters the urban landscape by emphasizing the methodological refinement within this practice. Ultimately, this project endeavors to reposition pixo within the broader narrative of urban communication, recognizing it not merely as vandalism but as a vital expression of contemporary 2 [Do I shape the city or does it shape me?] - Gaines Center for the Humanities Senior Thesis. Brazilian culture that reshapes public spaces and perceptions. By analyzing the intersections between space, body, and urban identity, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of how marginalized voices communicate through their environment. The visual experiments created for the visual component of this project are informative and explorative in nature, with the purpose of generating knowledge that will support the findings and questions here discussed. This visual research is also multi-modal in nature, using multiple methodologies, materials, and their interactions to let design exploration be the methodology itself. The phenomenon of pixacao is a massified expression of the city and therefore involves a gigantic amount of people and their voices, it would be simply erroneous to make any generalization of this urban movement. A diverse body of experiments helps in the construction of a multi-faceted presentation of the very complex subject of pixo, with each design, photograph, collage, and model studying a different aspect of these illegal signatures. In fact, data, when limited to a ‘’square’’ system is reductive and anachronistic, therefore it demands interdisciplinary studies to interpret the cultural meaning of a topic as nuanced as pixacao.

Available for download on Friday, May 21, 2027

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