Hard to Forget (8 Photos)

A single visual idea can carry an entire story.

Flowers cross a face, two figures meet across an apartment block, and a bronze body is shaped around an absence. These eight murals, sculptures and street interventions make their meaning clear at a glance.

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🌺 “Inner Bloom” — By JEKS ONE in Lexington, North Carolina, USA 🇺🇸

Closed eyes and parted lips fill the wall while vines, leaves and pink flowers cross the face. JEKS ONE titled this 2025 mural “Inner Bloom” and painted it at Holland Brooks, 206 E. 3rd Ave., where the brick façade frames the portrait like a giant window.

💡 Nerd Fact: JEKS ONE is a former touring metal drummer. In a 2025 interview, he said music pulled him away from graffiti for several years. He returned to art in 2015–16 and began experimenting with realism in 2016–17.

More: More murals by JEKS ONE

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😔 “Mélancolie” (2012) — By Albert György, formerly shown in Geneva, Switzerland 🇨🇭

Photographed while it was exhibited at the Rotonde du Mont-Blanc, Albert György’s 2012 bronze is officially titled “Mélancolie.” The City of Geneva notes that the original was later sold and is now in Toronto, so Geneva is the setting of these well-known photographs rather than the sculpture’s current location. Its hollow torso gives absence a physical shape, with the lake and sky once visible through the body.

💡 Nerd Fact: György’s command of bronze extends to metallurgy. His official biography states that he established his own foundry in Romania and developed a personal copper–tin alloy intended to be both strong and flexible.

More: “Mélancolie” in This Hits Hard

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🌊 “Amor bajo el agua” — By Anna Repullo Vique in Torrent, Spain 🇪🇸

Two people hold each other beneath the surface as fish and seahorses move around them. Anna Repullo Vique titled the 2021 mural “Amor bajo el agua”. It was made for La Paret Pintada with CIJ Torrent and the Ajuntament de Torrent at 5 Carrer d’Espartero. The building’s blue wall becomes the water around the embrace.

💡 Nerd Fact: The seahorses add a biological reversal to the love scene: male seahorses carry the pregnancy. NOAA explains that the female deposits her eggs in the male’s brood pouch, where gestation usually lasts two to four weeks before he gives birth.

More: “Amor bajo el agua” in Underwater Love

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🤗 Utility-Box Intervention — By Adam Łokuciejewski and Szymon Czarnowski in Olsztyn, Poland 🇵🇱

About 20 black lines give two gray utility cabinets eyes, arms and a reason to lean closer. Early documentation from July 2012 credits the intervention to Adam Łokuciejewski and Szymon Czarnowski. The original boxes remain fully visible, so the small painted gesture does all the work.

💡 Nerd Fact: “The Affection of Urban Infrastructure,” sometimes repeated as the work’s title, appears as the headline of Colossal’s 9 July 2012 article; the article text does not attribute that title to the artists.

More: The Olsztyn utility-box intervention

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🐉 Jackie the Chalk Dragon — By David Zinn in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA 🇺🇸

Jackie the green dragon peers through a real break in the pavement, one eye level with the street. In his original post, Zinn joked that breaking through the sidewalk can be a real eye-opener. The crack becomes both the edge of the drawing and the reason the little character seems alive.

💡 Nerd Fact: Zinn does not arrive with a fixed design for these temporary works. His official biography states that the street drawings are made entirely with chalk, charcoal and found objects, and are always improvised on location.

More: More chalk art by David Zinn

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🧜 “The Fabulous Tale of Being Different” — By Case Maclaim in Madrid, Spain 🇪🇸

A child in a golden wheelchair wears a self-made mermaid costume and looks directly out from the wall. Case Maclaim created “The Fabulous Tale of Being Different” for Urvanity Art in 2021 at Pasaje de la Caja de Ahorros. In the artist’s own account, the figure is the confident lead of an unknown fairy tale, inviting young viewers to imagine the rest of the story.

💡 Nerd Fact: Case Maclaim trained in a discipline devoted to preserving art rather than producing new walls: his artist profile records a diploma in Art Restoration and Conservation from Erfurt University of Applied Sciences. He was also a founding member of the photorealist Ma’Claim Crew.

More: The story behind Case Maclaim’s Madrid wall

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💞 “Flirting” (2021 Repaint) — By WD (Wild Drawing) in Ura Vajgurore, Albania 🇦🇱

Two figures lean toward one another from opposite sides of the apartment block. WD first documented “Flirting” in Ura Vajgurore in 2018 for HHART. After the 2019 earthquake damaged the building and mural, he returned in 2021 to repaint the composition with more vivid colors. The windows, balconies and central gap make the distance between the figures part of the work.

💡 Nerd Fact: The municipality changed its official name in the same year. Albania’s Law no. 34/2021 renamed the local-government unit from Bashkia Ura Vajgurore to Bashkia Dimal.

More: More works by WD (Wild Drawing)

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✨ Mural by Sid Tapia in Brisbane, Australia 🇦🇺

A child with tangled pigtails and wide blue eyes smiles above the word “shine.” Sid Tapia leaves the gray wall visible around the portrait, so the face and turquoise lettering read as one bright interruption.

💡 Nerd Fact: Tapia received his first pro-model skateboard in 1995. His official biography also records that he began oil painting only in early 2020, then won both The Lester Prize and its Installers’ Prize in 2021 with Through You.

More: More work by Sid Tapia

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Which one is your favorite?