Compro Árvores

A blue-skinned character stands against a dark wall beneath the massive steel beams of an industrial structure. He wears a yellow sign bearing the Portuguese words “COMPRO ÁRVORES” (“I Buy Trees”) and holds a lit match in his raised hand.

The work was created in 2017 by Crânio, a Brazilian street artist from São Paulo known for his distinctive blue-skinned characters. The colour blue refers to Brazil’s Indigenous peoples, whose lives and experiences frequently feature in his work, often in situations that confront them with the effects of modern consumer culture.

The artwork was produced in connection with the 2017 UrbanArt Biennale at the Völklinger Hütte UNESCO World Heritage Site in Germany.

The combination of an apparent offer to buy trees and a burning match gives the image an ironic yet unsettling quality. The Völklinger Hütte interprets the work as a reference to deforestation in the Amazon rainforest and the resulting loss of livelihoods for Indigenous communities.