São Paulo Phone Booth Street Art

MASP Area Ave Paulista Brazil

Street Art “Call Parade”

My tastes in art spans both ends of the spectrum.  Whenever I visit a foreign city there’s usually an Art Museum on my agenda, but I’m also drawn to graffiti and street art. Although I didn’t get a chance to visit an Art Museum in São Paulo, I encountered a lot of graffiti and as well as a recent street art installation hosted by the local phone company, Vivo.

On every street in every neighbourhood in  São Paulo, you’ll pass the public phone booths, nicknamed “hoods”, and in 2012, 100 hoods in the most photographed and hip neighbourhoods became canvases for local artists.

During my strolls around the city, I encountered my fair share of phone booths that were part of this street art installation called “Call Parade”

“Vivo Conectado” by Juarez Fagundes

It was fitting that the most eye-catching phone booth was opposite the Museum of Modern Art on Avenue Paulista.  A baseball hat, was decorated with headphones, blobs of paint and paint-brushes.  A pair of clown shoes completed the look.

MASP Area Ave Paulista Brazil

The translation of Vivo Conectado is “Live Connected”.

My interpretations is that as well as being connected by telephone – we need to be connected to art, and not take it too seriously.

MASP Area Ave Paulista Brazil

This phone booth was my favourite, and it made me want to dig out some change and make a call.

Even if you don't need to make a call, you'll stop at one of these public phones—they're so photogenic. #SaoPaulo Click To Tweet

 

Author: Roving Jay

Jay is a project manager who swapped corporate life for a nomadic existence as a travel writer. She works with authors and entrepreneurs to help them achieve their self-publishing goals and reach their target audience through content marketing. Jay has published a series of travel guides, a travel memoir, and nonfiction books about travel writing. She housesits and volunteers around the globe with her husband, a Hollywood set painter, and she’s never more that 10 paces away from a wi-fi connection.

12 thoughts on “São Paulo Phone Booth Street Art

  1. Saving money on a business phone solution is easy when you’re not being nickel and dimed. Phonebooth offers you a Fortune 500 business phone system with minimal up-front cost and no long-term financial commitment.

  2. What a lovely idea to incorporate some colorful street art into phone booths! I love the clown shoes too. I have found that some of the graffiti on old buildings and walls in US cities like Philadelphia for example of superior quality done by really talented artists. 🙂
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    1. Yes I really love street art. There’s a big difference between street art and graffiti .. but so many people put both of these styles under the same banner and don’t like it. But we’ve seen some amazing street art on our travels.

  3. This has to be the most fun way to make a phone call I’ve seen in awhile! I love how colorful they’ve made boring old pay phones!

  4. These are so adorable! I love when cities put their own unique personality into the city’s art. I’m a fan of contemporary art – I try to visit a contemporary museum/any museum when I travel to new places.

  5. How did I miss this?! Especially since I stayed right off the Paulista! Nevertheless, Sao Paulo was my very favorite city in Brazil – whereby, I haven’t been to the north so that Bahia might still take the cake – since I’m very much into art and Sao Paulo definitely has the widest and most exciting art scene. However, I’ve missed the booth 🙁

    1. There were so many arty phone booths dotted around the city when I visited. It was like a different form of street art, and I loved seeing them rising in the distance like an artistic mirage.

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