Vincenzo di Martino, alias Ninjaz, was born in Florence in 1986 and has been painting since he can remember. Since the age of 12, he feels that he belongs to a subculture, that of resistance, of the right of the street and of the fight for one’s rights.

Fight for your right is the wild roar of one of his animal caricatures, with its hyperbolic aesthetics and its sometimes macabre taste. His characters, monsters from the present and the past, recall the style of cartoons, creating a lysergic imagery that moves between visual hallucinations and ghostly narratives. Ninjaz lives of – but, above all, lives for – graffitism and freestyle, the two hip-hop disciplines capable of catalyzing his creative power by combining meditative exercises and adrenaline rushes.

Whether writing, painting on canvas or silkscreening, each work is an armistice, a brief caesura in his tireless struggle, embodied in irreverent design and incorruptible slogans. Art on the street, staying strong, being wise. The Florentine underground is his field of militancy, armed with spray paint and brush he promotes free artistic expression and claims his eternal creative outlet.

© Asia Neri