NUNO VIEGAS, THE MOST INTERESTING INTERVIEW YOU WILL EVER READ ABOUT GRAFFITI AND URBAN ART

Nuno Viegas, (Quarteira, Portugal), is a hyperrealist artist who has caught our attention with murals where he mixes apparently opposite worlds. The simplicity, honesty and fluidity of his stroke contrast with the elements of graffiti culture that flow into or even protagonize his work. The result creates a bridge between the sometimes dirty reality of graffiti and the way this Portuguese artist makes things tidy.

We interviewed Nuno Viegas to cross with him the fine line that separates his graffiti murals and street art.

‘For me the only important aspect about graffiti wars is that it drives people to paint more and more, bigger places, hotter spots, nicer pieces, develop their style, and improve theirs skills.’

Your compositions could be defined as minimalist hyperrealism. How would you define them?
Honestly I don’t care nor think too much about which genre should I fit in, but when I think about it I am definitely inspired by hyper and photorealism, minimalism and surrealism. I was never too good at art history in school so I lack a bit of historical and terminology knowledge about the past to know into which box should I fit into. It took me 3 years to pass “History I“ at university… I think this is something historians and art critics will have do to for me one day if my name gets relevant enough to be spoken about. Anyway, I guess I would sit somewhere between minimalism, hyperrealism and surrealism.
For me, I am part of the now, a huge movement whose name is still being carved. Some refer to it as street art, some refer to it as urban contemporary (a term I like) and some WRONGLY refer to it as graffiti — one thing is for sure: This Is Not Graffiti.

We have read your fragment in the book Untold Stories in which you talk about some graffiti wars in which you were involved in the past. Can you explain the importance of these conflicts in the culture to us? In the book you seem to explain the positive and negative aspects of these phenomenae. Can you summarize them for us?
For me the only important aspect about graffiti wars is that it drives people to paint more and more, bigger places, hotter spots, nicer pieces, develop their style, and improve theirs skills. This is what in a nutshell I recognize as positive from these conflicts. As years went by these Ego Wars (most of the time) made the culture grow a lot overall and all over the world. It would be nice if we encouraged each other with a bit more love in the equation… but I guess graffiti preserves very well our animales-like side of being humans as well.

‘For me, I am part of the now, a huge movement whose name is still being carved. Some refer to it as street art, some refer to it as urban contemporary (a term I like) and some WRONGLY refer to it as graffiti — one thing is for sure: This Is Not Graffiti.’

You also talk about the street art / graffiti duality. Where do you stand?
I am of the opinion that graffiti already has a long history and a solid foundation to stand on its own. To make it simple, I see the evolution of graffiti going more towards train writing than wall productions. I think train writing still goes by the unwritten rules and values of the traditional graff scene. While street art is another movement, deeply impacted by the graff scene in its early days, it now follows a totally different route which is taking the art world by storm. I consider this debate important just for the people who write about art history to write it right and not bend the truth about graffiti by trying to make it more acceptable. Graffiti doesn’t need that.
To make it even simpler: Most of our moms will look at a street art piece and will love it and most of our moms will look at a graff piece and totally hate it.

Don’t you think there is a difference between street art that talks about graffiti and that which has nothing to do with it?
Not really. In this case graffiti is only a subject of interpretation. It could be any other theme and still be street art. In street art you have a blend of artists with graffiti roots and artists with zero graffiti background, and they are both valid players. For me it is only important that people realize that graffiti and street art are different elements.

In your works you make the exercise of incorporating vandalistic aesthetics into a nice composition. What are you trying to convey with this?
My main goal is to create aesthetically pleasant compositions, something that when I look at it feels right to me as an overall image. It’s a bit like getting up writing your name. Most of the writers are not concerned about passing on a message; the main concern is about writing their tag with style and to be recognizable and stand out from their peers with their own style. For me personally it kind of works the same way as a visual artist.
To paint about graffiti, tell graff histories and evoke graff elements is just something that came up naturally to me due to my roots in the graffiti culture. I paint about a movement that is close to me, that had a great impact on my persona. I never had a master plan behind all of it. Thankfully it all came up in the right day and time. I am aware that if I would have triggered this concept 5 years earlier my career would probably have never flourished the way it did. I basically found myself entering a booming market niche with a huge demand that I wasn’t even aware existed in the contemporary art market.

Hyperrealistic painting and throw-up letters are very opposite elements: is your aesthetic language spontaneous or do you go beyond that? What are you trying to express?
Again there is no huge philosophical thought behind all of it. It is basically setting up a puzzle that is aesthetically pleasant to me with pieces that I bring from my own personal experience. The “hyperrealistic” painting came up with my internship in Rotterdam with the local artist Tymon de Laat. He pushed me to do the this painting exercise and with it I realized I had a hidden set of skills I could dive into and develop. After discovering this with his aid I naturally brought up a subject that is part of my reality and that I feel I can speak about truthfully.
With all the attention my work gets, the only message I try to pass on is that whatever I am painting as Nuno Viegas, “This Is Not Graffiti” and that message only comes through when I have the chance to speak about my work. This message is not visible in my work but only when I get the chance talk about it. And here is when I evoke one of my biggest surrealist influences, René Magritte, when he paints a pipe and writes bellow “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” – meaning, this is not a pipe, it is a representation of it.
For me it is important to separate the line between graffiti and whatever this new movement is, whether people call it street art, urban art or urban contemporary. I think graffiti has gone far enough to have its own box, its own label and whatever we are doing now even it is graffiti-bound it should take a different route and a different name, specifically for historical purposes.

More specifically… tell us about the symbol of the t-shirt worn as a balaklava.
I would say the Shirt Mask is my main character. It represents every graffiti writer. Its phantom-like appearance is a reference to the anonymous status of traditional writers, a characteristic of the culture where we know about all of these writers by their style, how prolific they are, by their feats and achievements, by all these myths and crazy stories surrounding this specific tag, when actually we have no idea of what this person looks like. Sometimes we get to hear about some specific physical characteristics that stand out or a vague idea about where they are from, but ultimately we have no Idea about their race, gender or social status and that is something that I really appreciate in this culture. Because in fact it can be anyone from this planet without anyone making a fuss about it.

In addition to gloves, nozzles and sprays, we also find origami tools such as airplanes, boats or crowns. Why?
The origamis came by “accident;” it was sort of an epiphany. In the studio I would randomly sketch and tag on loose pieces of paper laying around. And this one time, just because, I grabbed an A4 sheet covered in throwies and tags and folded it in to a paper plane, after I tossed it landed on the table and when I sat down I looked and it and just found something interesting about. So I grabbed my camera, took a few shots and the rest is history.
With it comes a deeper meaning about life and what you do to with ideas and goals. Sometimes we have an idea and at first glance in a matter of seconds we visualize the whole thing in our heads, from beginning to end. But it takes action to make things happen.

‘Our playground was the streets and street bombing was our thing. Still nowadays that’s what I like the most. I still prefer concrete to steel.’

The origamis refer to your action towards that first draft you write down on a piece of paper. You can crumple and toss it to the bin and you will have a missed opportunity, you can put it in the drawer and get a forgotten opportunity or you can actually give shape to that idea and make it happen — “give it wings” metaphorically speaking, when I refer to the paper plane.
The origami concept opened a door to explore a new direction and still keep it bound to my main language. Initially I was just painting paper planes but then some other elements came up, some directly connected to the main subject of grafftii writing, like the crown, which is a prominent item in our culture that appears very often. Some others like the boat, which I painted for the first time in my hometown Quarteira (a town deeply influenced by the sea and its fisherman community) came up by meeting a specific theme I wanted to introduce in my dialogue while still maintaining my signature style.

The colors yellow and blue are of great importance. Do they also have meaning?
Same as before. I use these at first because I like the way they fit into a work. For a while I painted a few pieces where white and dark blue were quite prominent. And besides liking it aesthetically, this color match would also make reference to the flag of my hometown, Quarteira.
The yellow I picked mainly last year (2022) as a background for almost all my mural pieces, for no particular reason other than it is a color that pops and definitely makes the pieces stand out.

Do you still paint illegal graffiti?
Not very often. But once in a while the boys convince me to go out. I am the crew’s “princess” nowadays, haha. I find it hard to stay awake and go to paint late night, and run around. I guess my body is not used to it… Right now if I do a full night without sleeping the next day I feel like I have drank a full bottle of whisky by myself even if I only drink water.
Most of the times I have been joining weekend jams with the crew at a legal wall or an abandoned spot, just to keep practicing writing my name and have a great time with my brothers.

What are the peculiarities of graffiti in the south of Portugal?
Graffiti arrived in Quarteira for the first time in the late 80’s, if I’m not wrong, with some tourist writers who came by at the time. But it had a minimal impact. It was only in the end of the 90’s early 2000″s that it exploded around here. This is due to the slow pace of information around that time, where communication technologies were nothing like nowadays. By that time the main communication link with other cities and countries was done via post.
Portugal had a huge evolutionary time gap compared with the USA and other European countries and that gap was even bigger in the south. This allowed me to be part of the second generation of writers in the south. This is something I consider a huge privilege.

‘I would say the Shirt Mask is my main character. It represents every graffiti writer. Its phantom-like appearance is a reference to the anonymous status of traditional writers…’

Compared with writers in Germany, Holland, France or Spain for example, in 1999 I had the chance to be part of the early beginnings of this movement with very little impact from outside our own shell and this is something very special to me. It was getting to know a whole new world basically from scratch.
Only after a couple of years we got access to the classic Montana Hardcore (I Still miss that smell) which we had to buy in nearby city – Faro at the RAZ0 Shop. Only one of us had a drivers license and a scooter and this guy, “Ride/Ryde” was his tag, would go to Faro every Saturday morning to get cans for all of us with someone riding in the backseat to bring as much stuff as possible. I would skip lunch at school to save as much coins as possible for cans at the time.
The main reference for us in the beginning was subworld Magazine, a Portuguese graff magazine which made only 2 editions. It was hard to get stuff from outside.
One thing that played in our favor was the fact that we are a touristic town and quite often we would meet writers from other cities and countries and those visits would always impact our perception of the scene and helped us to develop our own.
Also around here there is no metro and there is only one train line that goes back and forth between west and east. I guess for this reason train bombing took a while to become a thing around here and it gained more traction in the generations after mine. Our playground was the streets and street bombing was our thing. Still nowadays that’s what I like the most. I still prefer concrete to steel.

What is the intervention you are most proud of? Why?
I am proud of a few milestones! Between showing my work in museums, showing with great galleries and doing collaborations with other artists, I would highlight the collab with HERAKUT. More specifically Akut (from the former Maclaim Crew). I found out about his work in 2004. My crew mates had been to a jam in Sevilla and came back with these fotos of Maclaim’s crazy production there and since that moment I became a fan of the whole crew but very interested in Akut’s work. I think I met him and Hera in person in 2017 and in 2019 I got the chance to do a massive wall with them in Tegel, Berlin. It was a really great moment for me. To be there on the lift painting and looking to my right and there is Akut on another lift working on that same piece! Priceless.

Nuno Viegas, (Quarteira, Portugal), is a hyperrealist artist who has caught our attention with murals where he mixes apparently opposite worlds. The simplicity, honesty and fluidity of his stroke contrast with the elements of graffiti culture that flow into or even protagonize his work. The result creates a bridge between the sometimes dirty reality of graffiti and the way this Portuguese artist makes things tidy.

We interviewed Nuno Viegas to cross with him the fine line that separates his graffiti murals and street art.

Your compositions could be defined as minimalist hyperrealism. How would you define them?
Honestly I don’t care nor think too much about which genre should I fit in, but when I think about it I am definitely inspired by hyper and photorealism, minimalism and surrealism. I was never too good at art history in school so I lack a bit of historical and terminology knowledge about the past to know into which box should I fit into. It took me 3 years to pass “History I“ at university… I think this is something historians and art critics will have do to for me one day if my name gets relevant enough to be spoken about. Anyway, I guess I would sit somewhere between minimalism, hyperrealism and surrealism.
For me, I am part of the now, a huge movement whose name is still being carved. Some refer to it as street art, some refer to it as urban contemporary (a term I like) and some WRONGLY refer to it as graffiti — one thing is for sure: This Is Not Graffiti.

We have read your fragment in the book Untold Stories in which you talk about some graffiti wars in which you were involved in the past. Can you explain the importance of these conflicts in the culture to us? In the book you seem to explain the positive and negative aspects of these phenomenae. Can you summarize them for us?
For me the only important aspect about graffiti wars is that it drives people to paint more and more, bigger places, hotter spots, nicer pieces, develop their style, and improve theirs skills. This is what in a nutshell I recognize as positive from these conflicts. As years went by these Ego Wars (most of the time) made the culture grow a lot overall and all over the world. It would be nice if we encouraged each other with a bit more love in the equation… but I guess graffiti preserves very well our animales-like side of being humans as well.

‘For me, I am part of the now, a huge movement whose name is still being carved. Some refer to it as street art, some refer to it as urban contemporary (a term I like) and some WRONGLY refer to it as graffiti — one thing is for sure: This Is Not Graffiti.’

You also talk about the street art / graffiti duality. Where do you stand?
I am of the opinion that graffiti already has a long history and a solid foundation to stand on its own. To make it simple, I see the evolution of graffiti going more towards train writing than wall productions. I think train writing still goes by the unwritten rules and values of the traditional graff scene. While street art is another movement, deeply impacted by the graff scene in its early days, it now follows a totally different route which is taking the art world by storm. I consider this debate important just for the people who write about art history to write it right and not bend the truth about graffiti by trying to make it more acceptable. Graffiti doesn’t need that.
To make it even simpler: Most of our moms will look at a street art piece and will love it and most of our moms will look at a graff piece and totally hate it.

Don’t you think there is a difference between street art that talks about graffiti and that which has nothing to do with it?
Not really. In this case graffiti is only a subject of interpretation. It could be any other theme and still be street art. In street art you have a blend of artists with graffiti roots and artists with zero graffiti background, and they are both valid players. For me it is only important that people realize that graffiti and street art are different elements.

In your works you make the exercise of incorporating vandalistic aesthetics into a nice composition. What are you trying to convey with this?
My main goal is to create aesthetically pleasant compositions, something that when I look at it feels right to me as an overall image. It’s a bit like getting up writing your name. Most of the writers are not concerned about passing on a message; the main concern is about writing their tag with style and to be recognizable and stand out from their peers with their own style. For me personally it kind of works the same way as a visual artist.
To paint about graffiti, tell graff histories and evoke graff elements is just something that came up naturally to me due to my roots in the graffiti culture. I paint about a movement that is close to me, that had a great impact on my persona. I never had a master plan behind all of it. Thankfully it all came up in the right day and time. I am aware that if I would have triggered this concept 5 years earlier my career would probably have never flourished the way it did. I basically found myself entering a booming market niche with a huge demand that I wasn’t even aware existed in the contemporary art market.

Hyperrealistic painting and throw-up letters are very opposite elements: is your aesthetic language spontaneous or do you go beyond that? What are you trying to express?
Again there is no huge philosophical thought behind all of it. It is basically setting up a puzzle that is aesthetically pleasant to me with pieces that I bring from my own personal experience. The “hyperrealistic” painting came up with my internship in Rotterdam with the local artist Tymon de Laat. He pushed me to do the this painting exercise and with it I realized I had a hidden set of skills I could dive into and develop. After discovering this with his aid I naturally brought up a subject that is part of my reality and that I feel I can speak about truthfully.
With all the attention my work gets, the only message I try to pass on is that whatever I am painting as Nuno Viegas, “This Is Not Graffiti” and that message only comes through when I have the chance to speak about my work. This message is not visible in my work but only when I get the chance talk about it. And here is when I evoke one of my biggest surrealist influences, René Magritte, when he paints a pipe and writes bellow “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” – meaning, this is not a pipe, it is a representation of it.
For me it is important to separate the line between graffiti and whatever this new movement is, whether people call it street art, urban art or urban contemporary. I think graffiti has gone far enough to have its own box, its own label and whatever we are doing now even it is graffiti-bound it should take a different route and a different name, specifically for historical purposes.

More specifically… tell us about the symbol of the t-shirt worn as a balaklava.
I would say the Shirt Mask is my main character. It represents every graffiti writer. Its phantom-like appearance is a reference to the anonymous status of traditional writers, a characteristic of the culture where we know about all of these writers by their style, how prolific they are, by their feats and achievements, by all these myths and crazy stories surrounding this specific tag, when actually we have no idea of what this person looks like. Sometimes we get to hear about some specific physical characteristics that stand out or a vague idea about where they are from, but ultimately we have no Idea about their race, gender or social status and that is something that I really appreciate in this culture. Because in fact it can be anyone from this planet without anyone making a fuss about it.

In addition to gloves, nozzles and sprays, we also find origami tools such as airplanes, boats or crowns. Why?
The origamis came by “accident;” it was sort of an epiphany. In the studio I would randomly sketch and tag on loose pieces of paper laying around. And this one time, just because, I grabbed an A4 sheet covered in throwies and tags and folded it in to a paper plane, after I tossed it landed on the table and when I sat down I looked and it and just found something interesting about. So I grabbed my camera, took a few shots and the rest is history.
With it comes a deeper meaning about life and what you do to with ideas and goals. Sometimes we have an idea and at first glance in a matter of seconds we visualize the whole thing in our heads, from beginning to end. But it takes action to make things happen.

‘Our playground was the streets and street bombing was our thing. Still nowadays that’s what I like the most. I still prefer concrete to steel.’

The origamis refer to your action towards that first draft you write down on a piece of paper. You can crumple and toss it to the bin and you will have a missed opportunity, you can put it in the drawer and get a forgotten opportunity or you can actually give shape to that idea and make it happen — “give it wings” metaphorically speaking, when I refer to the paper plane.
The origami concept opened a door to explore a new direction and still keep it bound to my main language. Initially I was just painting paper planes but then some other elements came up, some directly connected to the main subject of grafftii writing, like the crown, which is a prominent item in our culture that appears very often. Some others like the boat, which I painted for the first time in my hometown Quarteira (a town deeply influenced by the sea and its fisherman community) came up by meeting a specific theme I wanted to introduce in my dialogue while still maintaining my signature style.

The colors yellow and blue are of great importance. Do they also have meaning?
Same as before. I use these at first because I like the way they fit into a work. For a while I painted a few pieces where white and dark blue were quite prominent. And besides liking it aesthetically, this color match would also make reference to the flag of my hometown, Quarteira.
The yellow I picked mainly last year (2022) as a background for almost all my mural pieces, for no particular reason other than it is a color that pops and definitely makes the pieces stand out.

Do you still paint illegal graffiti?
Not very often. But once in a while the boys convince me to go out. I am the crew’s “princess” nowadays, haha. I find it hard to stay awake and go to paint late night, and run around. I guess my body is not used to it… Right now if I do a full night without sleeping the next day I feel like I have drank a full bottle of whisky by myself even if I only drink water.
Most of the times I have been joining weekend jams with the crew at a legal wall or an abandoned spot, just to keep practicing writing my name and have a great time with my brothers.

What are the peculiarities of graffiti in the south of Portugal?
Graffiti arrived in Quarteira for the first time in the late 80’s, if I’m not wrong, with some tourist writers who came by at the time. But it had a minimal impact. It was only in the end of the 90’s early 2000″s that it exploded around here. This is due to the slow pace of information around that time, where communication technologies were nothing like nowadays. By that time the main communication link with other cities and countries was done via post.
Portugal had a huge evolutionary time gap compared with the USA and other European countries and that gap was even bigger in the south. This allowed me to be part of the second generation of writers in the south. This is something I consider a huge privilege.

‘I would say the Shirt Mask is my main character. It represents every graffiti writer. Its phantom-like appearance is a reference to the anonymous status of traditional writers…’

Compared with writers in Germany, Holland, France or Spain for example, in 1999 I had the chance to be part of the early beginnings of this movement with very little impact from outside our own shell and this is something very special to me. It was getting to know a whole new world basically from scratch.
Only after a couple of years we got access to the classic Montana Hardcore (I Still miss that smell) which we had to buy in nearby city – Faro at the RAZ0 Shop. Only one of us had a drivers license and a scooter and this guy, “Ride/Ryde” was his tag, would go to Faro every Saturday morning to get cans for all of us with someone riding in the backseat to bring as much stuff as possible. I would skip lunch at school to save as much coins as possible for cans at the time.
The main reference for us in the beginning was subworld Magazine, a Portuguese graff magazine which made only 2 editions. It was hard to get stuff from outside.

‘For me the only important aspect about graffiti wars is that it drives people to paint more and more, bigger places, hotter spots, nicer pieces, develop their style, and improve theirs skills.’

One thing that played in our favor was the fact that we are a touristic town and quite often we would meet writers from other cities and countries and those visits would always impact our perception of the scene and helped us to develop our own.
Also around here there is no metro and there is only one train line that goes back and forth between west and east. I guess for this reason train bombing took a while to become a thing around here and it gained more traction in the generations after mine. Our playground was the streets and street bombing was our thing. Still nowadays that’s what I like the most. I still prefer concrete to steel.

What is the intervention you are most proud of? Why?
I am proud of a few milestones! Between showing my work in museums, showing with great galleries and doing collaborations with other artists, I would highlight the collab with HERAKUT. More specifically Akut (from the former Maclaim Crew). I found out about his work in 2004. My crew mates had been to a jam in Sevilla and came back with these fotos of Maclaim’s crazy production there and since that moment I became a fan of the whole crew but very interested in Akut’s work. I think I met him and Hera in person in 2017 and in 2019 I got the chance to do a massive wall with them in Tegel, Berlin. It was a really great moment for me. To be there on the lift painting and looking to my right and there is Akut on another lift working on that same piece! Priceless.