Sometimes Sawe. Sometimes Sawee. Sometimes Martí Sawe. Sometimes *****.
Sometimes legal. Sometimes very legal. Sometimes illegal.Sometimes he plays by the rules. Most of the time, he doesn’t. But he’s probably out there somewhere, enjoying the game.Since 2001, the Barcelona-based graffiti writer and artist has been squeezing spray cans across walls around the world — and rarely in the same way twice. For Sawe, graffiti has always been a playground: a place for experimentation, observation, humor, mistakes, characters, letters, strange encounters, and whatever happens along the way.
His work is difficult to pin down, and that seems to be exactly the point. Sawe moves freely between graffiti, illustration, painting, animation, and visual storytelling. One moment his work can be loose, spontaneous, and almost deliberately naive; the next, obsessively detailed. Characters collide with letters, everyday observations become drawings, and seemingly simple ideas unfold into unexpected visual worlds.
There is a constant sense of movement behind it all. A restless curiosity that keeps things from becoming too comfortable or predictable. Like a wild squirrel with an eye for detail, Sawe collects impressions, ideas, situations, and absurdities and turns them into his own visual language. The same attitude follows him onto the street. Graffiti can be serious without taking itself too seriously. A wall can be carefully planned or completely spontaneous. The rules can be followed, bent, misunderstood, or simply ignored. What matters is staying curious and keeping the game alive.
Images by graffiti artist SAWE
More than two decades after he started writing, that game is still going. Different names, different walls, different cities, different approaches.
**Sometimes Sawe. Sometimes ***. Always moving.