the street is our gallery

The time of roses is the new mural by Guerrilla Spam created for the Circolo 25 Aprile in Florence in collaboration with Street Levels Gallery. A work that wants to make us reflect on the themes of resistance and liberation, in which symbols are central, as often happens in the works of artists.

The wall develops horizontally generating two poles, a negative one, characterized by dark and gloomy colors and a positive one, characterized by light and bright colors; in the center there is a white circle to indicate the cyclical nature of things. The background is then divided into different parts on which the collective intervention is placed.

The central theme of the project is to tell the story of the resistance today, in its broadest and most current sense. Resistance is understood as a cyclical concept, in the sense that everything can come back, the idea of resistance is therefore not to be referred only to the historical moment of the partisan struggle. Resistance can be that of the return of fascism, but it can also be resisting the daily rhythms, the challenges of everyday life, the problems of individuals, life.

The title The Time of Roses comes from an alleged but well-known phrase by Brecht: “In dark times we sing of dark times, the time of roses will come for us too”. Times always alternate, positive moments followed by negative ones and so on, but the wall makes a wish: we have arrived at the time of roses, like those that bloom in the square of the Circolo 25 Aprile. A wish for the arrival of more serene times, which are achieved through resistance.

The mural is the result of a long collective work that sees the citizens personally involved. During the last few months, four workshop meetings have been organized at the club, in which everyone had to create a symbol linked to a word by inserting it in a scale of colors from red to black: from a symbol of resistance to one that blocks or hinders this resistance. These elements were then reworked by the artists and inserted in the central background of the mural, with a paper legend that allows them to be deciphered.

The other part of the mural that involves the community is the portion of the orange background where, during the day of April 25 at the Club, the participants left their fingerprints by dipping their finger in the paint, these colored signs in turn represent the petals of the roses, as if to indicate the beginning of a new spring.

Street Levels Gallery

Via Palazzuolo 74 A/R – 50123 Florence

Via Melegnano 4-4R – 50123 Florence