Murmure is a French artistic collective and communication agency founded in 2009. Their street art works are part of an ever-evolving project, aimed at telling stories that strike passersby with humor and cynicism, or forcing them to reflect on urban decay and social marginalization. It is a project that leverages and plays with urban spaces to narrate the contemporary metropolis, exposing its distortions or mocking its grotesque sides.
“Le ville est le théâtre de toutes les effervescences, qui vont quelquefois jusqu’à l’étouffement. S’évader par des portes multicolores de toutes tailles, dessinées à la craie enfantine, sur des murs décrépis, ne reste qu’une possibilité élitiste. Tracées à la craie et de tailles différentes, placées a hauteur d’enfants sur des murs salis et vieillis par la pollution, elles rappellent l’innocence, la simplicité d’un dessin enfantin, l’onirisme.”
Raw portraits of homeless people stare at us from peeling walls, forgotten faces worn down by life, with wrinkles like cracks on the wall. Trompe-l’oeil posters hastily plastered up, ephemeral works meant to be ruined by time, as degradable as the walls and streets of our cities, like life itself.
And then there are children secretly drawing on walls, hooded youths smoking with their faces hidden under their sweatshirts, and policemen riding ostriches. Doors drawn on concrete with colored chalk.
Like JR, Vhils, Mentalgassi, Boxi, and C215, Murmure narrates the contemporary world and its contradictions by exploiting its very foundations. They denounce its alienating nature by using the street itself as both stage and material for their works. The street becomes a creative and unique space, both poetic and critical.
