When Art Takes Over (17 Photos)

A giant teapot, a portrait inside a tree and a crack filled with mosaic tiles

A cat grins from a ruined room, painted balconies bend across an apartment building, and a child draws the outline of a house.

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🧱 Life is an Open Book — By Brad Spencer in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA 🇺🇸

Children climb around a giant open book in Brad Spencer’s brick sculpture at The Green in Charlotte. Spencer carves the bricks while the clay is still unfired, then fires them and assembles the finished pieces with mortar.

💡 Nerd Fact: The North Carolina Brick Association commissioned the sculpture in 2002 for The Green’s literary theme. ArtWalks CLT records that the park’s developer, Wachovia Bank, asked the participating artists to explore reading and literacy; many of its employees were involved in a classroom reading program.

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🫖 Let Forever Be — By Natalia Rak in Ludwigshafen, Germany 🇩🇪

A woman rests in a giant teacup, with her feet over the rim and a floral teapot behind her. Natalia Rak’s Let Forever Be covers a house wall at Hochfeldstraße 137 in Ludwigshafen.

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🌼 Forest Portrait — By Dinho Bento in Nagyerdő, Debrecen, Hungary 🇭🇺

A face and a white flower seem to emerge from the bark. Dinho Bento painted a wooden panel shaped to fit the tree’s hollow. For his Debrecen tree installations, he used water-based paint and a removable fixing paste, allowing the panels to be taken down without leaving residue on the trees.

💡 Nerd Fact: Bento developed these installations from a series of canvas paintings inspired by tree knots. In a 2021 interview, he explained that the forest installations allowed him to resume making public art while the pandemic had interrupted his other projects.

More: See more by Dinho Bento

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⏱️ Salvador Dalí — By ZABOU in London, UK 🇬🇧

ZABOU painted Salvador Dalí on a shop shutter on Commercial Street in Spitalfields, with a melting pocket watch spilling onto the pavement. Photographed there in February 2017, the mural pairs his curled moustache with a yellow spotted jacket.

💡 Nerd Fact: Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory (1931) measures just 24.1 × 33 cm. The cliffs in its background depict the coast of his home region of Catalonia.

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🐦 I HAVE A DREAM — By BANE & Pest in Chur, Switzerland 🇨🇭

A giant bird rises from a glowing open book, carrying a child between its wings. BANE and Pest painted the mural at Schulhaus Lachen, Belmontstrasse 11, in Chur. Developed with the city and its Cultural Office, the project brought BANE back to the neighborhood where he grew up.

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😸 Cheshire Cat — By Bill Knospi

Bill Knospi painted a huge pink Cheshire Cat inside a ruined building. Its yellow eyes and broad grin fill the wall beyond the broken brickwork.

💡 Nerd Fact: The Cheshire Cat does not appear in Lewis Carroll’s original manuscript, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. Carroll introduced the character when he added two chapters while preparing the story for publication as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865.

More: See more by Bill Knospi

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🏢 Warped Balconies — By Shozy with Alexey Aste in Satka, Russia 🇷🇺

Shozy, working with Alexey Aste, painted windows and balconies that appear to bend across the end of an apartment building in Satka. The distorted facade echoes the real balconies along the neighboring wall. Photo: @fotoshakirov.

More: See more by Shozy

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🖌️ Painting Tree — By Semiok in Istanbul, Türkiye 🇹🇷

A real tree becomes the upper end of a giant paintbrush. Semiok painted a hand around its trunk and continued the brush onto the pavement with a pool of blue paint.

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🏺 Les Gardiennes de l’Argile — By Hopare in Alfama, Lisbon, Portugal 🇵🇹

Hopare placed this portrait of a woman in a headscarf on a weathered wall in Alfama, Lisbon, with clay vessels behind her. The paste-up belongs to his Les Gardiennes de l’Argile series, inspired by the pottery traditions of São Pedro do Corval. Photo: Ride & Paint.

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🌑 Nether Flower — By Jon Foreman at Freshwater West, Wales 🇬🇧

Dark stones form a flower-shaped hollow around a pale center, with smaller stones balanced on upright sticks around it. Jon Foreman created Nether Flower in 2021 at Freshwater West in Wales. Photo: Jon Foreman / Sculpt The World.

More: See more by Jon Foreman

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🍇 The Grandfather from Gurjaani — By Sasha Korban in Gurjaani, Georgia 🇬🇪

An elderly man holds a bunch of grapes in one hand and a bowl in the other, above a table of food. Sasha Korban painted this portrait of a winemaker for the 2024 Tbilisi Mural Fest in Gurjaani, fitting the figure around the building’s real windows.

💡 Nerd Fact: Traditional Georgian qvevri winemaking uses large clay vessels buried in the ground to ferment and store wine. UNESCO added the method to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013.

More: See more by Sasha Korban

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🧩 Mosaic Repair — By Ememem in Lyon, France 🇫🇷

A broken patch of pavement becomes a tiny mosaic. Ememem follows the crack’s irregular outline with curved bands of green, yellow, black and white.

💡 Nerd Fact: Ememem coined the term flacking from the French word flaque, meaning puddle. In an interview with STIR, the artist explained that the name Ememem imitates the sound of the motorcycle used to travel to the work sites.

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🤲 Hands on the Domes — By Nikita Nomerz

Two domed structures become figures with enormous hands at their entrances. Nikita Nomerz uses the openings and curved roofs as parts of the scene.

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🐋 El brazo del mar y la tierra — By Alegría del Prado in Vigo, Galicia, Spain 🇪🇸

A girl in an orange dress cradles a whale, with flowers and other animals gathered around her. The duo Alegría del Prado painted El brazo del mar y la tierra at Rúa Rola 116 in Vigo for the 2025 edition of Vigo Cidade de Cor.

More: See more by Alegría del Prado

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🎈 True Love Lies in Our Differences — By HIJACK

A boy and a girl walk in opposite directions while their red and blue balloons meet above them to form a heart. HIJACK leaves the children in black and white, with the crossed balloon strings stretching between them.

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🏠 In My House — By Seth Globepainter in Laon, France 🇫🇷

A child kneels on a painted floor and uses a spray can to draw the outline of a house. Seth Globepainter painted the Laon mural in 2022, filling the dark facade with red, yellow and purple lines. He later returned to the idea in In My House, a print edition whose house outlines he painted individually by hand.

More: See more by Seth Globepainter

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Which one is your favorite?