The sgraffito technique is a traditional architectural ornamental technique used for the decoration of plastering and wall cladding. On a technical level, it can be considered as a variety or type of engraving carried out on a stewed surface using two superimposed layers or colours that reveal shapes or drawings when the outer layer is removed or scratched. Contracidade arises from the collaboration between Peri and Carola Carrot, an expert in the technique of sgraffito, who sought to mix this traditional technique with a contemporary art discipline such as muralism, giving rise to this mural.
In this sgraffito, the repetition of a pattern, a typical procedure of this ancestral technique, is combined with a highly complex geometric composition, generating a design that uses the duality of the concave and the convex to play with the viewer’s perception and give rise to a visually disconcerting composition.
On a conceptual level, Contracidade relies on the duality of concave/convexity to allude to human perception, and to how people can interpret the same objective fact in completely opposite ways depending on their own schemes of thought, interests or prejudices.
