ESTAMOS JUNTOS - WE ARE TOGETHER IN THIS - PAINTJAM
PAINTJAM
2026
Twenty-eight artists, one Caracol aka snail-shaped wall
Put 28 artists with 28 different ways of holding a spraycan or brush on one wall, and you’d expect a war of colour. Old-school writers, muralists, first-timers, a 17-year-old and a few ones almost reaching 50: chaos on a staircase. Though that’s not what happened on Sunday, October 25th at Caracol da Graça, in Lisbon’s Graça neighbourhood.
The wall that kept coming back
The yesyoucan.spray collective (YYC.S) has been claiming this spiral of walls since 2018. Eight years ago it was a constant tug-of-war between taggers and the council. Today it’s a designated space for creativity, and a bridge between pure graffiti and contemporary street art. The neighbourhood changes fast: new faces, new prices, new views, and old neighbours holding on to what makes it home. Walls like these need to remember, talk back and keep the conversation human. In this edition, that conversation was about mental health.
From New York to Graça
The seed was planted about two years ago, when jojo_stickers invited the collective to join @youarenotalonemurals (YANA), a New York non-profit public art project that uses murals to spark hope, connection and conversations about mental health. YYC.S joined them and came back for the third round this year. At first the brief was simple and strict. Four colours only: yellow, white, black and grey. The restriction was deliberate. No colour to hide behind, no easy prettiness, just contrast, which is how the topic lives anyway: light and heavy, hopeful and hard, on the same wall.
In this edition we went beyond…
The line-up
The collective brought artists from its own circle, invited old-school graffiti writers, called in familiar faces from the mural world, and opened the rest to an open call. Writers such as Amor, Pear, Creyz, Magus, Jay-M, Moami, Poker and Fled13bombingart painted next to Utopia, Fred Aranha, Observ, Fétosz, Natê, Out Iam, Muka.Ame, Kike, Bree, Rita Grancho, Lixsan, Flix, Nayara Black.es, Psy, Gabriel Hüne, G’Colors, TNCNV, LRR, Evilove, Marta Martins and Urtiga. They came from Portugal, Venezuela, Brazil, France, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, the US and Belgium.
Saturday afternoon was the painful part: rolling a fresh foundation over some beautiful pieces from previous editions. It hurts, the collective admits. The planned yellow base even turned slightly greenish. But a wall that never lets go of anything can’t say anything new. So on Sunday morning the artists met at the bottom of the stairs and hauled paint up, one by one. A small street art fair popped up along the way to keep everyone curious. The staircase works like a natural amphitheatre, so everyone could watch everyone else paint from morning until nightfall. Instead of competing for space, the artists built on each other, layer by layer, until separate pieces became one shared message: you are not alone. #estamosjuntos aka #wearetogetherinthis.
Each artist also contributed a “feel-good sentence” about mental wellbeing. Some went for carpe diem or do what you love. Others chose the bumpy road: “There isn’t a tree in the world that the wind hasn’t shaken”, “Cada um sabe a dor e a delícia de ser o que é”, “this too shall pass.”
Why paint about this at all?
Let’s be honest: these days our wellbeing is challenged through the continuous uncertainties and challenges of political and personal discourse. A paintjam won’t make a difference to it. But it can trigger a space of conversation. A day of live-painting about art and mental health to break the taboo around it with a palette of vivid colours to survive the wintertime ahead. It goes beyond yet “a nice mural for a good cause”. According to the World Health Organization, roughly one in seven people lives with a mental illness. That includes someone in your queue, at your bar, on your metro. You’d never know by looking, and that silence is what this day was built to interrupt. For the collective, this is where public art does what a brochure never will. It doesn’t explain the feeling. It holds space for it.
Check out what our friend and member Joana Merlini had to say about our event [in Portuguese] @ Mente Cultural: https://mentecultural.com/yes-you-can-spray-caracol-da-graca-saude-mental/
*Photos by Jan aka @rebelationavenue
*Production by:
*Inspired by @jojo_stickers
ánd @youarenotalonemurals
*Permission by @galeria_de_arte_urbana
*Paint: @jopinto.tintas
» We are 100% self-sustained. No grants, no investors • every tour booked, every workshop hosted, every commissioned mural, directly funds new artistic work in the city and the artists ánd our collective behind it. «
