Kuêio: Art, Laughter, and Rebellion

Behind the humor, the bright colors, and the apparent lightheartedness of his long-eared character, Kuêio has developed a body of work imbued with social commentary and a profound reflection on graffiti. Blending irreverence, memory, and a personal quest, the artist asserts the freedom of expression more than ever.

On the streets of São Paulo, a long-eared rabbit pops up where you least expect it. By turns cheeky and endearing, he moves through a world where humor meets poetry and where every wall becomes the stage for a reflection on our times. As an heir to both pixação and street art, Kuêio transforms graffiti into a language that is both popular and socially conscious. Inspired by Brazil’s outskirts, he turns his works into urban fables that examine societal inequalities, prejudices, and contradictions. Without ever losing his sense of lightheartedness, he reminds us that art can still challenge perceptions, bring a smile… and raise awareness.

The rabbit has become your signature, but above all, it’s a character. At what point did it go from being a simple drawing to a true alter ego?
In graffiti, it’s natural—and even part of the culture—for a character to become an alter ego. This idea of “marking one’s territory” is an integral part of graffiti culture: the artist wants to make it clear that it was HE who was there. So I think my character has been my alter ego from the very beginning, ever since people saw it on the street and spontaneously associated it with me. It just happened naturally.

Your rabbit is funny, sassy, sometimes violent, but rarely innocent. What does he allow you to say that Kuêio couldn’t say himself?
Absolutely everything. I mainly use humor—and sometimes cynicism—to address these issues, whether to express something I disagree with in graffiti culture or, more broadly, in society. I’ve noticed that people are more receptive to the questions raised by a work of art than when they’re posed directly by the artist himself, and they take more time to reflect on them.

We often see the same characters in different situations. Have you been building, over the years, a sort of chronicle of the outskirts of São Paulo?
I’d never thought of it that way [laughs]. When I depict the outskirts, it’s often with nostalgia, thinking back to the years from 1980 to 2006, when I lived there and was fully immersed in street life. Today, my perspective is more detached: it’s shaped by my visits and the stories of those who still live there. I spent more than ten years in Minas Gerais, a region that left a deep impression on me—so much so that it inspired my name, Kuêio. One of my most popular graffiti pieces, “No Graffiti on Sports Betting,” humorously subverts a typical street game from the Mineiro Triangle to denounce the rise of online betting. I no longer live on the outskirts, and I consider myself an irreverent graffiti artist, precisely because my lifestyle is very different from that of my peers in São Paulo. Today, I feel closer to a laid-back guy from the countryside than to a resident of São Paulo’s working-class neighborhoods. So I’m not trying to create a social commentary. Rather, I’m trying to offer the viewer an escape from the chaos, pressure, and anxiety.

Your work seems to constantly play with contradictions: tenderness and violence, humor and social criticism, the streets and the art market. Is this a way of conveying the complexity of contemporary Brazil?
I adopted this approach for two reasons. The first is to communicate more effectively with my audience: people are much more receptive to messages with multiple layers of meaning and tend to reflect on them more deeply. This enriches my work. The second is to represent Brazil in all its diversity, but also to represent myself: an artist from São Paulo and Minas Gerais, man and woman, straight and gay, artist and graffiti artist, urban and rural, rational and religious, a self-employed artist completely indifferent to market trends. My work is multifaceted. It’s a mix because Brazil is multifaceted.

Since you came out, your work has also taken on a more personal dimension. Has painting become a way for you to reclaim your story?
With each passing year, we reveal a little more of ourselves. I think artists have the privilege of experiencing this more freely, because they’re less bound by social conventions. I recognize myself in that. I allow myself to get to know myself better, and that ultimately nourishes my art. Or perhaps it’s the act of creating itself that brings something to the surface within me and allows me to understand myself better? I don’t know… But this connection I allow myself to make between artistic creation and self-knowledge does indeed make my work increasingly personal.

How do you view today the young boy who used to paint illegally on walls in Minas Gerais—or perhaps even São Paulo?
To be honest, I don’t remember ever painting illegally on the streets of São Paulo [laughs]. When I arrived here, the hostility of the police and the aggressiveness of the urban scene discouraged me from doing illegal interventions in this city. I’m a very peaceful person, and I don’t want to sacrifice my peace of mind just to prove a point. That part of my story took shape in Minas Gerais. That’s where I started doing pixação and created many illegal pieces. I was arrested several times and did indeed experience police violence. Yet the city seemed much more open, much more receptive—something I can’t really explain… Today, I feel a certain nostalgia. I’d like to start doing illegal murals again, even if only from time to time. To look at a wall and simply do whatever I feel like doing on it. For me, it’s a way of giving the city a gift. But not here in São Paulo [laughs]!

What’s the question no one ever asks you, but you’d love to answer?
Wow, that’s a tough one! Maybe: What’s more valuable—an imperfect piece of graffiti, done entirely freehand, or a perfect reproduction created using technology? My answer is simple: the imperfect graffiti. The one that distorts the anatomy but captures the gesture. The one that moves away from being a copy to let the line, the color, and the attempt emerge. That one is human. And art is made by human beings. In a world obsessed with perfect lines, colors, and composition, machines are taking up more and more space. First with faithful reproductions of photographs, then with images generated by artificial intelligence, projected onto a screen or viewed through a VR headset. I’ve even seen wall-mounted printers. Graffiti has always been an act of transgression. Perhaps the next act of transgression should be directed against this dependence on technology. I’m talking here about graffiti—art in its purest form—not commercial murals. We need to work, and it’s normal to use these tools to save time. But what about art that comes from the soul—the kind that prevents humanity from losing itself in excessive consumption? The artist has this role of preservation. If he renounces this essence, he blends into the system and loses his ability to reconcile human beings with themselves.

Check out
Kuêio: @kueio.art