Inframundo

SEGO is a street artist from Mexico and his images can bring to mind both anatomic muscle diagrams as well as the horror illustrations of Hans Arnold or paintings by the 16th-century painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who painted faces consisting of fruit, vegetables, roots, bird bodies and books. SEGO’s creatures seem to belong somewhere between the animal and plant kingdoms, with alternating branches and muscles.

This is what the artwork looks like

En muralmålning fyller gaveln på ett trevåningshus. En hare sitter på turkos gatsten. På horisonten mot en ljus turkos himmel växer gulnat gräs. En liten hund backar undan från en fladdermus som kommer flygande. Hunden och haren har satts ihop med växter, rötter, grenar och svampar.

About the artist

SEGO lives and works in Mexico City but grew up in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, near the flora and fauna of the jungle. As a child, the shapes of animals and plants made a big impression on him. Organic growths, often in the form of mushrooms and fungi, are a recurring element in his motifs.

SEGO does not think that his paintings carry any direct political message, but his art does seem to share a kinship with the politically charged mural painting tradition in Mexico. SEGO sees the recurring fungi as a symbol for life and as a metaphor for social life and the fact that we humans need each other to live and thrive.

SEGO’s artistic career began with classic, textile-based graffiti. In recent years, his graffiti has had to make way for both figurative and abstract street paintings. He signs detailed figurative images such as this one in Örebro with the artist name SEGO, but in his abstract paintings, he instead uses his other alias, OVBAL. In the latter, graffiti’s sometimes spiky, sometimes undulating, design language is present.