WEDNESDAY WALL OF FAME !
You might have seen already some of their colourful alarm clocks pop up through our city. Last summer we even had the pleasure to host their very first mural in this lovely city (still standing strong) with our collective yesyouCAN.SPRAY. So it was about time to find out and share a little more about the do’s and don’t’s of these two dynamic guys with one mission in this world: to wèk up !
Q. Who are you?
Wèkup is a duo. We’re two very old friends behind these clocks pasted or painted in the streets of Paris and other cities in the world like Lisbon. We’re both from the suburbs of Paris and we grew up just next to a wasteland full of graffiti. We were just kids and we were very amazed by all these colors, letters and characters painted illegally on walls by anonymous artists from our neighborhood. So we just took spraycans and tried to paint like them. We did graffiti during 10 years before starting Wèkup.
Q. What is your work about?
We’re definitely graffiti addicts and this is our main inspiration. As we told you, we start painting when we were just kids, so you can also find comics and cartoon inspiration in our work.
The idea of painting clocks was born one night in a bar. At this period, we did not have time to paint a lot like we use to do. We were a bit sad and nostalgic. Stuck in a kind of vegetative state. We realized that we have to wake up! That’s why we started to paint clocks.
This is the general message behind Wèkup: telling people to wake up from their stick-in-the-mud everyday life, if they are not happy, to enjoy and do what they want to do. Time passes fast.
Q. When and how come you started to share your work in the streets?
We always painted in the streets, so we can’t answer precisely to your question. It’s natural and very important for us to paint in the streets. To give our work freely to people.
Q. Where do you paint? How do you use the space in addition to your work?
We mostly paint and paste in the streets of Paris. We also glue woody clocks on walls. We often paint in Lisbon also because the family of one of us is from the city. We really like this city, one of the best place in Europe for street art !
Our goal is to paint all over the world. So we travel and try to put some clocks in most countries we can. Today, you can find Wèkup’s pieces in France, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Turkey, Lebanon, Malaysia, Singapour, Indonesia…
Q. What memorable responses have you had to your work? / What is the wall you are most proud of?
We really love the idea of anonymity that we found in the graffiti culture and want to keep that. So we prefer when noone sees us painting or pasting up our posters. It demands to be fast and organized. But the very best moments is when we come back to take photos and when we find people watching our work, smiling or taking photos.
Follow and spread the clocking vibes ; )
https://www.instagram.com/wekupstreetrider/
If you got any picture collected from pieces around the world, share it with us using our #lisbonstreetarttours #wednesdaywalloffame