SELVA DE PEDRA – Movimento Xarpi No Rio

In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second largest city, a unique namewriting culture called XARPI exists for decades now. Just like São Paulo’s ‘Pixação’ writings it is a regional phenomenon which came up without influences from traditional New York graffiti writing.

The city’s writers focus on logo-like tags which sometimes are hard to decipher. Besides common signatures on the street level they climb several story high facades or bridges to leave their marks in the most eye-catching spots mainly in black and white. Unlike usual tagging the signs are often placed following a certain rhythm that is based on the architecture of the chosen surfaces.

SELVA DE PEDRE (concrete jungle) is a 52-paged zine that solely focuses on these writings. The photos which have been taken from 2015 to 2025 feature locations from the city center to favela outskirts. They are arranged in collage style featuring drawings and XARPI scribbles on paper as well. The zine comes in five different colourways but all include the same content and will be shipped out randomly.

52 pages, 15,4 cm x 21,6 cm, limited to 100 copies, in 5 colour versions
Release date: June 2025
Publisher: Editions Infinies