Artist Ememem beautifies the streets of Europe with what he calls ceramic “flacking”; using artistic and decorative tiles to fill potholes and cracks in the old streets, sidewalks and buildings.
Ememem Ceramic Flacking
In France, Spain, Italy and Norway, to name a few, you may spot Ememem’s colorful ceramic work in unexpected places. Used to fill in broken asphalt, cracked cement or crumbling stairs, the tile art varies in shapes, colors and styles.
In the US, we have an artistic pothole filler of our own, Chicago artist Jim Bachor, who also works in ceramics, creating contemporary pop culture mosaics in situ and as art objects. The Lyon-based Ememem, however, uses a different style for his street repair.
He mixes tile shapes, sizes, styles and colors in his work so that the patterns vary in type and provenance. His tile installations are reminiscent of everything from old Roman mosaics (like Bachor’s) to classic Portuguese tiles and French tile work to New York Subway Tiling and Pop Art.
The artist began repairing the streets and sidewalks in his home town of Lyon in 2016 with his work and has since filled cracks, divots and gouges in Madrid, Barcelona, Torino, Genova, Genoa and other European cities.
In 2018 he was commissioned to create installations for the NuArt Festival, an annual street art tour in Stavanger, Norway.
You can see how over time Ememem’s installations have become more refined and more complex, including glazed, gilded and glass tiles.
Shown at top:
all images courtesy of the artist