44flavours × Origes
São Luís, Bairro São Francisco
The collaboration between 44flavours and Origes grew out of a long-standing friendship. Since an initial stay in São Luís in 2014, Julio from 44flavours and Origes have maintained an ongoing exchange—about art, about music, and about the role of images in public space.
Music forms a shared foundation of their practice. In São Luís, reggae is more than a genre—it is part of the city’s cultural identity, audible in the streets, tangible on the corners of the neighborhood. Origes has long carried these influences within his visual world. For 44flavours, in turn, music—especially improvisation in jazz—is a structural principle: painting as a translation of rhythm, as a visual composition in the moment.
The mural at the typical esquina in Bairro São Francisco was created without a fixed design. For Origes, who usually plans his murals with precision, this meant a shift in perspective. He embraced the improvisational working method of 44flavours—a process driven by dialogue, by responding, by absorbing and continuing. The exchange that usually takes place between Julio and Sebastian within 44flavours became here an open principle between Julio and Origes.
In this way, the image developed during the act of painting itself. The surroundings—sounds, conversations, movements—flowed directly into the composition. The nocturnal scene that emerged is not an illustration of the place, but a condensation of its atmosphere.
The esquina is a social node: different life realities meet here, news circulates, discussions arise. It is a place of mixture and acceptance—often an informal refuge for those who find no space elsewhere. At the same time, the corner remains ambivalent: energy can intensify, dynamics can shift. Yet in everyday life, it is above all a space of encounter.
This very tension is carried within the mural. It does not present itself as a decorative gesture, but as a resonant body—it responds to the existing culture and gives something back.
Within the visual language, two approaches meet. Origes works with clear figurative abstraction, drawing on motifs from local culture and transforming them into recognizable forms. 44flavours, on the other hand, operate predominantly in abstraction; figuration appears only as suggestion. Here, the focus is less on representation than on translation—of emotion, rhythm, and musical structure into color and surface.
The composition unfolds like a song: motifs appear, repeat, vary, and overlap. Both positions share a flat, reduced painterly approach and the recurrence of certain formal elements. In the collaborative work, these approaches intertwine. Planned and improvised moments coexist, respond to one another, and generate an image that is neither clearly illustrative nor purely abstract.
The mural provides the esquina with a visual anchor point. It valorizes the place without appropriating it. Existing cultural expressions—especially reggae—find a correspondence within it and open up new occasions for dialogue.
In this way, the image itself becomes part of the social fabric: it influences its surroundings while simultaneously being shaped by them. The wall is not merely a surface, but an actor.
The place paints as well.
