Italian street artist battles racism by turning swastikas into cupcakes

VERONA, Italy, Nov 24 (Reuters) – Swastikas on the wall turn into big cupcakes with purple icing, and the phrases “my Hitler” are reworked into “my muffins”. All in a day’s work for the Italian avenue artist who fights racism by turning nasty graffiti into meals.

“I deal with my metropolis by changing symbols of hate with scrumptious issues to eat,” says the 39-year-old artist, whose actual identify is Pier Paolo Spinazze and whose skilled identify, Cibo, is the Italian phrase for meals.

On a current sunny morning he had been alerted by one in all his 363,000 Instagram followers that there have been swastikas and racial slurs in a small tunnel on the outskirts of Verona.

Up he turned, sporting his signature straw hat and necklace of stuffed sausages. He took out his bag of spray paints and set to work, whereas automobiles drove by beeping.

He coated up the slurs with a brilliant slice of margherita pizza and a caprese salad – mozzarella, tomatoes and basil. A swastika was reworked into an enormous crimson tomato. As he created the murals within the tunnel, which every took round quarter-hour, folks drove by, peering out of their home windows to stare and wave. One artwork trainer wound down her window to go with his work.

In recent times human rights teams have warned of rising racism in Italy following mass immigration from Africa. Fascist tradition and wartime dictator Benito Mussolini nonetheless have a tough core of admirers.

As he has turn into an area movie star in Verona, he has additionally made enemies: “Cibo sleep with the lights on!” somebody spray painted on a wall. He turned the menace into the substances of a gnocchi recipe.

“Coping with extremists isn’t good, as a result of they’re violent folks, they’re used to violence, however they’re additionally cowards and really silly,” Spinazze stated.

“The necessary factor is to rediscover values that we might have forgotten, particularly anti-fascism and the combat in opposition to totalitarian regimes that stem from the Second World Battle,” he stated. “We should remind ourselves of those values.”

(This story has been refiled to repair spelling of Verona in dateline)

Writing by Giulia Segreti
Modifying by Gavin Jones and Peter Graff

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