Please join the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, The Department of Public Works, Busboys and Poets, and Words Beats & Life for an Art Double Feature:
From 6-6:30pm, we’ll celebrate the arrival of new artwork by Jamila Okubo (a graduate from Words Beats & Life’s Urban Arts Academy, and Arts Apprentice in Murals DC 2011 who is headed to Pratt University this fall), along with the art of Ayo Okunseinde and Violetta Markelou.
Stay with us for a screening of the documentary film, “Chocolate City Burning: The Untold Story of Dot-Com,” by local filmmaker and photojournalist Apoxy One. A conversation with the director, will follow. Take a look at the films official trailer.
The documentary chronicles one of the most prominent crews to emerge from Washington DC’s graffiti-boom of the 1990’s. “Chocolate City Burning” follows an oddly mixed group of three friends; Sime, Demon and Mega, as they gained notoriety throughout the city in the late 90’s for doing enormous, elaborate, three dimensional murals. As Con, a noteworthy writer from Baltimore says: “It wasn’t just another piece on a wall…the Dot-Com pieces stood off the wall, they created a whole environment.”
Eventually the crew would spread out to other cities, and the three founding members grew older and farther apart. Demon moved to Japan for many years as a world-class industrial designer, Mega would spend the next many years in courtrooms and rehabs and Sime continues to live, paint and bomb in Washington, D.C. Now all in their 30’s, their interviews and reflections on their youth make very clear that, when all was said and done, graffiti was about more than painting, it was a coming of age and a crossing of worlds.
FREE & open to the public on a first-come, first served basis.
This event is however a fundraiser for “The Redline D.C. Project”,
Questions? Call 202-667-1192 and ask to speak to Mr. Mazi Mutafa
