Who is 3ttman?
Operating slightly under the radar, a European street artist has been making his mark in Hanoi.
A French artist who lives and works in Spain, 3ttman is an internationally known street artist. He first came to Hanoi in late 2009 at the invitation of the Spanish Embassy and has been returning regularly ever since. Things he has left behind here include a 30-meter mural on the ceramic road and giant-sized tongue-in-cheek graffiti based on the disappearing BeTong stencils…
See below to watch the cool video of an interview with the artist, done by the boys of Almaz, Vincent Baumont and Isaak Le. There are also more pictures of what he has been up to here, and the answer to the question – what’s with the name?
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/21190630[/vimeo] While working on his mural for Hanoi’s famous ceramic mile, he met Hanoi ceramic artist Nguyen Tuan (who recently exhibited his sculptures at the Vietnam Museum of Fine Arts) and has since been back a couple of times to work in Tuan’s studio in Phu Lang.
Visit 3ttman’s website to see lots more of his funny, thoughtful and irreverent work.
My only concern graffitiests and vandalizer artistes is that you may be throwing your art preferences into the public arena and most of us may not really like them at all….are you being subversive or just spoiled brats? Places where you’ve got permission to put your art is ok but in my public spaces, no way! Real protest art good! Self indulgent pap not so good! Are you only doing this sort of thing in Hanoi to make yourself a hero? Sort of big foreign fish in small pond of notoriety! Yout legal work is really attractive. Where to next? Public transport in the dead of night? The alleyway leading to my neighborhood? Just becoz it’s under the radar doesn’t equate you with Banksy.
The following reply to Artyfarty was emailed by 3ttman to Hanoi Grapevine:
3ttman writes:
Hello mr Artyfarty, I don’t think I have ever painted one of your walls or something belonging to your property. If you knew a little bit more of what your talking about, you’d have noticed that I am always pretending to be respectful and am against vandalism. If you want to make a campaign against public space visual pollution’s you should start with advertisers, but maybe you find a real protest in it?
And what if my work would equate me with Banksy? would that justify street art to your eyes?
I only paint at daylight, in the dead of the night I mostly get drunk and go to Karaoke’s where i am definitely a hero.
If you live in hanoi, I’d be please to have a nice farty chat with you about art and life next time I go there.
Love.
Thx Brian for the post!