Copenhagen 2017
I have wanted to go to Copenhagen for a long time, even before I became a professional artist. I always found Copenhagen to be an exotic land because today’s Danes are the descendants of of the most fierce, ancient Norse warriors known as The Vikings. The term Vikings actually originates from the body of water in between Copenhagen and southern Sweden called The Vik. The English language also gets a term from the Vikings, the word berserk comes from an ancient class of Norse warriors called the Berserkers who went into an uncontrollable rage to perform inhuman feats during battle.
If you don’t know by now, my other passion besides art is history and the combination of the two which is really synonymous of one another is what I love to see, read and talk about. This is what brought me to Denmark, as well as wanting to paint murals there. This trip was great because unlike my past travels, I had ample time to see the sights and that was on bicycle. Copenhagen is just as much or I would say even more a bike city than Amsterdam and that is saying a lot. Riding around seeing all the great Scandinavian architecture (past and present) and city engineering was the best and only way to see so much in the 5 days I was there. One of the highlights of my trip besides painting street art was going to Christiania which is a self-
proclaimed autonomous hippy village that began in 1971 that was given to the Squatters by the government. It is a very chill spot that is a ‘must see’ when in Copenhagen. The walk around the lake where you can see the hippy homes are worth the visit. The Danish people are very nice and polite. They have a great chill vibe as I experienced with my hosts, one of them, Peter who is the organizer of Copen Hagen Street Art and Lints is a local artist. They took me to the Bicycle Factory in Norrebro (neighborhood I was staying at) where there is a high concentration of graffiti and street art murals. There is where I met another local artist, Neils Betersen. Of course I would relate The Bicycle Factory which is the last bastion of legal walls in the city as Copenhagen’s ‘5 Pointz’ and like the former “ institution for higher burning” it will be demolished due to gentrification. I‘m glad I got to paint there like I did a year ago at Madrid’s 5 PTZ, La Tabacalera. Copenhagen has a great scene for high quality graffiti, some street art but it is definitely a graffiti art dominated city. And in that regard it reminds me of Berlin. Big thanks to Copen Hagen Street art and Lints for their amazing hospitality and showing me their beautiful city. I had a terrific time visiting and like Lints says, “another red pin on the map” which is always the primary objective when Fumeroism is going global.
