{"id":1831,"date":"2016-07-14T19:46:02","date_gmt":"2016-07-14T19:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/life\/arts-culture\/kashink-on-orlando-long-beach-and-using-street-art-for-lgbt-rights\/"},"modified":"2016-07-14T19:46:02","modified_gmt":"2016-07-14T19:46:02","slug":"kashink-on-orlando-long-beach-and-using-street-art-for-lgbt-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/art\/kashink-on-orlando-long-beach-and-using-street-art-for-lgbt-rights","title":{"rendered":"KASHINK on Orlando, Long Beach and Using Street Art for LGBT Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Photos by Asia Morris.<\/em><\/p>\n

Editor’s note: This Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Described as \u201cone of the few very active female artists in the French\/graffiti art scene,\u201d by POW! WOW! Long Beach<\/em>, Maeva Martinez, or KASHINK, as she\u2019s better known, is painting a very important mural at The Center on 4th Street. It\u2019s not quite finished, but this piece of street art is arguably one of the most Long Beach-relevant works going up during the week-long street art festival.<\/p>\n

It represents the LGBT community, its struggles as of now and sends a positive message of looking toward a brighter future. A future that encompasses, at the least, a lot more dancing and a lot less tragedy. The Long Beach Post<\/em> was able catch the prolific Paris native at The Social List during the POW! WOW! Long Beach<\/em> family dinner, where we stepped outside to chat about the mural, her life as an artist and why she wears a mustache.<\/p>\n

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So do you know what you\u2019re going to paint?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I usually improvise. I don\u2019t know how it\u2019s going to look exactly, yet, but I have an idea. Is that I\u2019m painting on the LGBT center and I want to paint a characters dancing in reaction to what happened in Orlando and also because we had two major attacks in Paris also last year, so I wanted to react to that and paint people dancing and spread a message like let\u2019s all keep on dancing.<\/p>\n

I like the spontaneity of it. I like finding myself in front of a wall and getting inspiration from what\u2019s going on around me, how I feel, the situation gives me inspiration.<\/p>\n

What is your connection to the LGBT community?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I did a big project in 2012 and throughout 2013 called 50 Cakes of Gay<\/a> and it was back then in support of gay marriage and equal rights. My work is pretty much activist. I don\u2019t always do gay-related stuff, but it was also one of the subjects that was important for me because there was a huge protest against gay marriage in France back then, and I wanted to react to that because I found it very shocking that all of a sudden all these people were willing to put that much energy against some other people\u2019s rights, because in France we protest a lot, but usually protest for our rights, not against other people\u2019s rights. So I found it really shocking.<\/p>\n

And as a street artist I think we have a chance to spread our messages and sharing our ideas so I think it\u2019s worth having something to say when you want to paint outside. And also the attacks that happened in Paris, especially the one where it was a similar attack to the club in Orlando, because they did kind of the same thing in a club in Paris, and it was in my neighborhood, so I really felt again, really touched by what happened in Orlando. I could really relate to what happened there.<\/p>\n

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Image courtesy of KASHINK<\/a>. The artist has clearly explored Long Beach a little more since Monday.<\/em><\/p>\n

Is this your first time visiting Long Beach?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been to LA before, I\u2019ve painted some walls in LA before, but I didn\u2019t really know about Long Beach. It\u2019s great. It\u2019s like, so far what I\u2019ve seen is pretty cool. People are relaxed, they\u2019re laid back. The beach is not far. And especially here in the neighborhood where I\u2019m painting, it\u2019s a pretty cool neighborhood.<\/p>\n

When did you start painting walls and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A little bit more than 10 years ago. Because I think at some point I was drawing and doodling at home, but spray paint was very attractive. I thought that the idea of painting on any surface and pretty fast was interesting, so I wanted to try it. And once I tried it I was like, \u2018Alright, that’s my thing. That\u2019s what I want to do.\u2019 So I had some friends who were graffiti artists and they encouraged me and basically I started painting more and more and bigger and bigger, adding more and more colors. All the money I had I would spend it on traveling, so I got to meet other artists from around the world, here and the US and other European countries. It\u2019s great because little by little you get to know other people you can share your passion with. It\u2019s like a network, in the end.<\/p>\n

Do you feel like a minority as a female street artist?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I feel like artists are a minority, anyway. Also I think there was always less women in arts, anyway. I always take this example, it\u2019s so easy to name five male painters who marked art history, but name like three women painters, it would be harder. But I think it\u2019s changing now. There\u2019s more and more street artists, to start with, so there are more and more women artists, as well. And I think it\u2019s pretty great because it gives a new energy to the scene, as well. Graffiti, back then, when street art was not that big and graffiti was really the most important scene in, also in Europe, there were fewer women I think. So now street art, muralism, is more figurative. So I don\u2019t know, I couldn\u2019t tell why there\u2019s less women street artists, it\u2019s very weird, but there\u2019s less women in many other fields, and street art is just one of those. I could talk about that forever, but I know you\u2019re not going to write it.<\/p>\n

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Can you talk about your mustache and what it means?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been wearing this mustache every single day for the past three years now; I draw it on. At first I was wearing it only for openings and performances in public because I thought it was like a persona, but I felt like I wanted to keep at some point and I challenged myself to keep it more and more, so first I would just wear it for the openings and then keep it for the way back home, then I would keep it all day, then I would keep it for a couple of days, then I would decide to go to the food market on Sunday morning and see what happens, then I would go to wherever, stores and different parts of the neighborhood, see what happens.<\/p>\n

In the end it was all good, because I\u2019ve always been eccentric and I think in the end, for me it\u2019s like a joke on the aesthetic cults and feminine makeup. Two symmetrical lines are okay here, (points to eyebrows) or here, but if you put the same lines somewhere else on the face, especially here above the lips, it becomes the opposite of feminine makeup. Whereas femininity is pretty much defined by\u2026 I mean makeup is one of the definitions of femininity.<\/p>\n

I find it interesting to question the habits that we have. Like no one thinks about questioning anything, like no one thinks about questioning putting plastic bags in your boobs in order to make them bigger, it\u2019s all good, but putting these two lines on my face is really going against the rules for real. Because I\u2019m challenging femininity and also the idea of women having to look good. I think we have a lot of pressure about that, that we\u2019re not supposed to look\u2026 We\u2019re supposed to look pretty, and attractive, and I think the mustache is pretty much the opposite of that and I think it\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n

And also, last thing is that, there are other cultures where beauty is defined by many other body modifications or tattoos or whatever kinds of stuff, so I figured why not come up with my own little tradition?<\/p>\n

For more information about Kashink, visit her website here<\/a>. For information about POW! WOW! Long Beach<\/em>, click here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Center Long Beach is located at 2017 East 4th Street.<\/em><\/p>\n

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