Food: The anti-hate artist covers swastikas and racist phrases with fruit and vegetable murals.

Cibo is his stage name, but also a manifesto of intent. For six years, he has decided to cover up Celtic crosses, swastikas, racist graffiti, and hate speech in the area between Verona and its province with drawings of strawberries, watermelons, muffins, sweets, and other foods, which he paints with a childlike, colorful, and tender touch.

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STREET ART AGAINST HATE

Born in 1982, Cibo, the stage name of Pier Paolo Spinazzé , is clear about who he is and what he does, and above all, why he dedicates his time to redeveloping the squalor of hate speech that blights cities. He defines himself as a "public art" artist, and feels deeply committed to caring for the city he works in, specifically Verona, seeking to sow beauty and art where he encounters neglect, vandalism, and hatred.

Cibo is keen to point out that his work shouldn't be confused with political propaganda: at a conference in Bilbao on equality and inclusion in Europe, he presented his project as a work of urban beauty, on the need to make cities welcoming and colorful, eschewing symbols of hatred, racism, and inequality. A work of decoration that everyone should engage in, done with the irony and lightheartedness of someone who knows his work isn't destined to be permanent.

As a good street artist, Cibo knows that his murals could still be defaced, ruined, or that the paint on the walls isn't meant to last forever, but he accepts it; it's part of the game. Like when, during his first murals, he drew a sausage to cover up a racist graffiti, it was defaced again, and so he came back and painted sauces on it.

This is Cibo's message: that irony, beauty, and love, as well as a can of spray paint, are very effective weapons for covering up the hatred, racism, malice, and vandalism that is increasingly prevalent in our cities and which, unfortunately, is not always effectively and consciously countered.

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FOOD, MURALS AGAINST HATE

For ten years, ever since he started graffitiing sweets, sausages, delicious dishes and laid tables on the walls, Cibo has never stopped making his art a means of participation: through his Facebook page he often receives reports of hate messages that need to be covered. Sometimes he does this together with citizens, as happened to San Bonifacio, where two groups of scouts helped him fix a mural that had been defaced again.
Because it's right that the beauty of a place should be thought of first and foremost by those who live there.

As for the choice of appetizing delicacies to draw, it's certainly no coincidence: in addition to being one of Pier Paolo Spinazzé's two passions, so much so that he often wears a scarf shaped like a row of sausages around his neck, he has worked in the restaurant industry and has been immersed in wholesome food since he was a child, in the Veronese countryside. Furthermore, Italy has an enormous gastronomic heritage , a source of beauty and inspiration. That same beauty, which, just as appetite comes from eating, comes from drawing and coloring cities, fighting hatred and haters.

(Featured image from Cibo's Facebook page )

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