Wynwood Walls

At Wynwood Walls in 2011, an early step in the international expansion of Scratching the Surface, Vhils introduced his subtractive approach into a Miami district then being redefined by a permanent programme of public art built mostly from painted murals. He excavated the wall, exposing its underlying structure and treating the accumulated layers as an active part of the image. The piece carried a practice shaped by the material histories of European cities into a different urban context, built on the same premise: architecture is not a neutral support but a record of time, labour and transformation.