Artists from more than 20 countries will create giant graffiti on high-rise buildings in Odintsovo near Moscow

Graffiti artists from more than 20 countries will take part in the international festival of street art "Cultural code", which will be held in the summer in Odintsovo. They will create giant graffiti on multi-storey buildings of the Novaya Trekhgorka microdistrict, Dmitry Levochkin, the festival’s curator, president of the Moscow Region Support and Development of Modern Art, told a press conference on Monday.

“Now this neighborhood is a typical gray bedroom building, of which there are many in the Moscow Region, but it can be transformed - the facades of the buildings will become works of art, a landmark. We will invite more than 60 artists from 26 countries, they will paint out 36 facades of 20-storey houses, the total size of graffiti will be more than 38 thousand square meters is a world record. In the Guinness Book of Records now there are 27,000 square meters of graffiti announced, we plan to invite representatives of the book of records to record a new record," - he said.

The Minister of Government of the Moscow Region for social communications, Irina Plescheva, clarified that the work of artists on the facades will begin this summer, presumably in August, and it is planned to complete the painting of the facades in early September. The theme for graffiti is free.

As the head of the Odintsovo district Andrei Ivanov noted, about 25 thousand liters of paint will be purchased to create graffiti, and a special coating will be laid on the facades before applying the drawings so that the images will not be washed off for a long time.

"We are not just holding a festival, we are creating a precedent for gentrification (beautification) of the New Three Hills and improvement of the urban environment. The neighborhood is considered problematic, but we think that it has good prospects and we will change our appearance, including through such visual transformations. I am sure that residents in September will not recognize their neighborhood, and it will become a new place of attraction," - said Ivanov.