Turn left ... for love: Clet Abraham's hacked street signs in pictures | Cities

Posted by Chauncey Koziol on Thursday, April 18, 2024

Turn left ... for love: Clet Abraham's hacked street signs – in pictures

Armed with a pack of removable vinyl stickers, the French painter and sculptor prowls city streets at night looking for road signs to modify. Some local governments love him and collaborated with him for International Women’s Day signs. But his girlfriend has been in an Osaka prison for four months

  • Clet Abraham: Forbidden Games is at Artistik Rezo, Paris, until 10 July

Elena Berton

Thu 21 May 2015 11.51 EDT Last modified on Wed 19 Oct 2022 10.28 EDT

  • While not entirely legal, Clet Abraham’s whimsical alterations of Europe’s omnipresent road signs take care not to alter the main function of the originals.

  • “I don’t damage the signs – because I use stickers – but I wake up attention and I create a dialogue,” he says.

  • Already celebrated on social media, Abraham’s art will be shown in Paris at an exhibition, Forbidden Games, hosted by art gallery Artistik Rezo from 22 May until 10 July.

  • The 48-year-old native of Brittany has a particular predilection for no-entry signs.

  • Abraham usually works at night, when he is unlikely to get caught. He props his bicycle against the post, stands on it and applies the stickers he has made in advance. “It literally takes 10 seconds,” he says.

  • Florence, Italy, where Abraham moved almost two decades ago, was the inspiration behind his first hacked road sign five years ago.

  • He was struck by the incongruity between the beauty of the Renaissance city and the road signs peppering its streets.

  • He has also worked in several other European cities, as well as in New York, where local authorities have mostly turned a blind eye.

  • The mayor of Paris’s 13th arrondissement was so amused by Abraham’s wit that he seized the opportunity to collaborate with the artist.

  • Abraham was allowed to work freely on the signs amid passersby and commuters on Place d’Italie.

  • Other authorities have taken a dimmer view. Abraham is involved in an ongoing legal dispute with the Tuscan town of Pistoia, and his girlfriend was arrested in Osaka, Japan in January on charges of vandalism and breaking road-traffic laws.

  • His latest collaboration with local authorities was in Figline Valdarno, a Tuscan municipality with a female-majority council, to celebrate International Women’s Day.

  • He superimposed a stylised naked woman on a no-entry sign, and dedicated the artwork to his partner, Mami Urakawa, who is still being held in Japan.
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