Street Art is not a boys’ club. In fact, many of the biggest street artists in the world are women. This month, let’s celebrate the 10 highest scoring women artists in the Street Art Cities ‘Best of 2022’ awards.
LessThe third place winner of the ‘Best Of 2022’ world-wide awards is American-born Lian, currently living in Barcelona and painting under the name ‘Murales Lian’. This mural is called ‘The Hands of Many’, a tribute to the women of Ondarroa, specifically the craft of weaving, not only the physical nets used for fishing, but also the metaphorical nets that hold together the community and the threads of stories told across generations.
Judith de Leeuw, also known as JDL, creates large- scale murals worldwide in order to draw attention to social issues. In a period of 6 years she managed to travel and work over 41 countries, including big parts of Europe, Asia and the United states. This mural is part of a series of murals called “Love is stronger than death”, dedicated to her father, who recently passed away.
Nina Khurtsilava painted this mural as a tribute to her grandmother, who grew up in a small village near Kiev, in Ukraine, and moved to Georgia at age 18, where she spent most of her life living in the same neighborhood in which the mural was painted.
Lidia is a self-taught artist born in Galicia and loves to represent women, Lidia’s heroines are very different from each other and express varied femininity, accompanied by a sense of loneliness that serves as a background. With this mural she talks about love, in particular loving someone in difficult times. When all is good, loving somebody is easy, but the challenge is to love in hard times.
Adry began her career as a painter after winning a children’s art competition at the age of 4. Since then, she has earned 29 local, 11 national, and 23 international awards. About this mural she painted together with Carlos Alberto, she says: “The Mexican royal eagle is a national symbol, inherited from our pre-Hispanic past, but it is also a symbol of strength and courage. And what better symbol to represent all my Mexican brothers."
Vanesa Galdeano and Anali Chanquia are two women street artists from Argentina who currently live in Barcelona. They go under the name ‘Medianeras’, the Spanish word for ‘side walls’. Unlike the walls, which are only responsible for separating the spaces, the side walls are those shared between neighbors. “This concept interests us because we believe that public art, besides making cities more beautiful, claims the idea of a shared place – of all individuals."
Kitsune Jolene is an urban and fine artist based in Belgium, with artworks all across Europe. Her work portrays mostly humans and animals in vibrant hues. Characterized by the emotionally loaded and dreamy feeling to them, there’s usually subtle nods to the occult or mythologies to look out for.
Mabel Vicentef is a nomad artist traveling the world, painting and working on high dimension murals. Her oeuvre can be found on public walls of Uruguay, Mexico, USA, Spain, Albania, Croatia, Bosnia, Morocco, New Zealand as well as several different locations in her homeland of Argentina. Her compositions connect us with a universal longing for a more innocent version of humankind, in tune with the beauty of the natural world.
This 14 meters high mural celebrates the Victorian practice of Floriography, a kind of cryptic communication that speaks hidden meanings in the form of flowers. Each of the 10 different flowers depicted have their own meaning, listed on the wall alongside the mural itself. Jacqueline de Montaigne is a self-taught artist with a background in medical ethics, who decided to make the switch to focus on her art career fully only a few years ago, yet already has over 80 murals under her belt.
Nina Valkhoff is a Dutch muralist and illustrator, with work in many European countries. This artwork, titled Étaín, illustrates the Irish mythological story about a woman of the same name, who got cursed and transformed into a scarlet fly. This is the glowing insect you see in the middle of my painting. In the very end of the story, over a thousand years have passed and Étaín has transformed many times, she flies away with her lover and they are seen as two swans.