Ardú Street Art Initiative 2021 - Asbestos with his mural / Photograph by Jed Niezgoda - www.jedniezgoda.comIf you take a walk on South Main Street, Cork City, you will be greeted by a stunningly poignant depiction of the current housing crisis in Ireland.
This work of art has been nominated for Best Street Art 2021 and it's easy to see why!
The mural is titled “What is home?” and was created by Asbestos for the Ardú Street Art Project 2021.
The piece is Asbestos asking: "‘What is home?’… Do you have one, is it safe, can you afford it? Never as a country has our sense of what home means been more at threat.”
The 2021 project featured four large scale murals by very well-known artists; Friz at St Finbarr’s Road, Shane O’Malley at Lower Glanmire Road/Horgan’s Quay, Conor Harrington at Bishop Lucey Park, and Asbestos at South Main Street.
Abestos is a Dublin born street artist who specialises in mixed media artwork.
He combines photography and painting onto found objects and has been contributing to Irish street art since 2003.
Abestos work portrays what he describes as the two versions of his persona.
“Each mask portrays two versions of myself, one alive and one dead. The dead version is a fictional character that represents me, if I’d been killed in a car bomb”.
The car bomb Abestos speaks of is real and took place 5 minutes after his mother walked past the car, 46 days before she gave birth to the artist.
Abestos says he has “always been fascinated about the fact that I may never have existed.”
For more details follow @ArduStreetArt on Twitter and Instagram and keep your eyes peeled for the other murals across the city.
