Wasted Rita, Catarina “Glam,” and Gonçalo Mar are representing Underdogs Gallery at the 24th edition Super Bock Super Rock festival in Parque das Nações this year, and yesterday’s introduction to graffiti workshop with Mar got things started off on the right foot. Mar, in the words of Underdogs Gallery, is a “graffiti and visual artist with a degree in Fashion Design whose imaginative visual universe is ruled by a pantheon of fascinating, larger-than-life stylised figures presenting a blend of contemporary pop culture and classical mythology.”
This friend of Atlas’ guided burgeoning urban artists through the ins and outs of creating meaningful works in unorthodox places, and, as always, he did it with a style all his own.
This isn’t the first time Underdogs has worked with the festival. They started their partnership together back in 2016 with the intention to “catalyse new connections between music and the urban-inspired visual arts,” and they’ve done just that ever since.
Aside from Mar’s two workshops (the second will be on Friday, July 20 from 15h to 18h), the gallery has built an Urban Art Space, a creative and interactive open-air gallery of original pieces by two of the Underdogs gallery’s most popular artists, Wasted Rita and Catarina Monteiro aka Glam. They have created some new pieces exclusively for this space, all of which have been inspired by the world of music.
The 20-year-old Portuguese graphic designer and illustrator Wasted Rita has gathered a substantial following since her blog Rita Bored started gaining popularity in 2011. The self-described “natural born agent provocateur” likes to think and write and draw and according to Underdogs, “pour forth little gems of sarcastic wisdom dipped in acid.”
Catarina “Glam” is a Portuguese urban artist whose work started almost 20 years ago when she began focusing on graffiti and painting murals. Her eventual transition from graffiti to multi-dimensional works on paper and wood has led her to creating design pieces and characters for several brands, exhibiting in various art collectives and solo shows, and getting involved in international festivals. Underdogs describes the artist as having a “vast universe…her mind is racing, and is an organised chaos, but everything she creates is done in a careful and attentive way down to the smallest detail.”