Between the street and the gallery: Trajectories of "pixadores" and graffiti writers in Lisbon and Sao Paulo

Graffiti and "pixacao" are two urban expressions traditionally understood to hold a subcultural and youthful character. While graffiti is currently a culture and a global language, given its expansion over several decades, pixacao remains, still, mainly limited to the Brazilian context, where it emerged. However, both graffiti and pixacao have been in recent years undergoing a series of transformations that somehow accompany more global tendencies. A process of artification and institutionalisation of these aesthetic languages is underway, which gradually increases its symbolic and economic value and its social legitimation. There is, then, a double movement in progress. On the one hand, "pixadores" and graffiti writers transform the skills acquired from street painting experiences into a source of income and, eventually, a professional career; on the other hand, there is the emergence of new actors and dynamics that expand the field of possibilities. Therefore, it is possible to observe the interaction of multiple social fields that involve the street, the gallery, the museum, or the private spaces. In this chapter, we intend to discuss these issues based on a research project involving the cities of Lisbon (Portugal) and Sao Paulo (Brazil).