A tour of Bologna’s street art with Alicè

“Hip-hop culture used to say that if you couldn’t afford art school, you had to invent your own art,” says Alice Pasquini, aka Alicè, as she stands in front of a mural covering a dark wall in the parking lot of Bologna’s train station. The piece is by Daim (Mirko Reisser), a German artist famous for his 3D lettering. Celebrated or stigmatized, wanted or not, legal or illegal, graffiti and murals have become part of the urban fabric in the cities where we live. Street art, born in New York, has since spread across the globe. In Italy, one of the first cities to embrace the movement was Bologna. We spoke to Alicè, an Italian street artist, set designer, and illustrator, who guided us through the city’s street art scene in a city tour organised to present (to the press) the new Ford Puma in Italy.

Born and raised in Rome, Alicè has taken her art worldwide, from Italy to São Paulo, Hong Kong, and beyond. But she’s also left her mark here, in the heart of the Emilia region. “Bologna is covered in large-format murals today, thanks to a 2012 city government project called Frontier,” Alicè explains. “But really, it all started with an exhibition back in 1984 that shouldn’t be forgotten.” She’s referring to “Frontier Art: New York Graffiti”, held at the Civic Gallery of Modern Art, a landmark event that featured the likes of Kenny Scharf, Crash, John Ahearn, Toxic, Haring, and Basquiat. The exhibition was made possible through the vision of Francesca Alinovi, an art critic tragically murdered the year before her dream was realized. Alinovi had lived in the United States during the height of the street art movement, forming close ties with its most exciting figures. Alicè then points out vertical, three-dimensional murals by Dado and Etnik in Bologna’s San Donato neighborhood, part of the 2012 project aimed at bridging the gap between the city center and its suburbs through street art.

“I’m not a huge fan of white walls, though I’ve painted my share of them,” Alicè confides as we walk through Pratello, an area teeming with street art from all over the world. “I prefer rough, uneven surfaces that are already ‘dirty’ – they tell a richer story.” As we stroll, she highlights the striking range of art here: from the prints of Guerrilla SPAM, to murals by Ericailcane and Bastardilla, and the shutter paintings by female street artists like Mp5 and Ale Senso. “Sadly, there aren’t many female street artists. Sometimes I’d ask my husband to come with me when I was working, and people would stop to compliment him.”

On one of the shutters on Via Pratello, Alicè has painted a girl holding a bouquet of colorful flowers, her face half-hidden behind the curtain. The image is a reminder that street art often stirs debate. Reflecting on her career, Alicè acknowledges the challenges she’s faced throughout her career but admits, “It’s the risk of signing your name.” As we head toward San Giovanni in Persiceto, a nearby town, in the new Ford Puma, Alicè shows us one of her most recent pieces, created in 2021. Titled A Thousand Red Poppies, the mural pays tribute to the women of the Resistance during World War II – relay girls, factory workers, farm laborers – whose stories remained on the fringes of the War of Liberation narrative. “This piece is close to my heart because it honors these forgotten women,” says Alicè, concluding our journey with a reminder of street art’s revolutionary spirit and its power for positive change.

Opening image: Via Pratello, Bologna. Courtesy Ford Italia