Slawn and Opake's Miami art show asks: Are you the hero or the villain?

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By Karan Singh

Befitting its name, the Art of Hip Hop gallery in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood has focused quite literally on the visual culture surrounding the craft of bars and beats. That is, until now. British artists Slawn and Opake have joined forces on a new exhibition, giving its guiding precept a unique spin tailored to their shared perspectives and experiences while remaining loyal to street art, graffiti, and make-do creative expression.

Heroes, Villains, and Violence features a series of wood-panel paintings that cover the full extent of the human experience. Through their combined exploration of self, violence, addiction, and rebirth, the duo formulates a dichotomy between the rough-edged aesthetics of DIY art and the overt, hyper-visible concepts and boundaries of comic books and cartoons.

"Heroes, Villains, and Violence" by Slawn x Opake. — “Heroes, Villains, and Violence” by Slawn x Opake. Photo provided by the Art of Hip Hop.

Remixed iterations of fictional icons like Harley Quinn, Goofy, and Popeye stand proud across the gallery, each sporting previously unseen moods and expressions. With Opake taking charge of the foundational layer of pop-culture imagery, Slawn steps in to embellish it with his trademark tear streaks.

Dr. Doom as an emotional mirror

Nowhere does this contrast stand out more than in the painting of a sad clown face superimposed over Marvel’s Doctor Doom: a mask atop a mask. Though the exhibition isn’t explicitly hip-hop themed, it’s impossible for any fan of the genre not to read this piece as a nod to the late underground rapper MF DOOM, who forged his own mythos in the supervillain’s image and advanced character-building in music to unprecedented heights.

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“We both realised that we are actually trying to do good things,” Opake says. “Both of us would love to be considered superheroes to someone and not villains.”

Peppered between the large, animated slabs is the recurring motif of boxing gloves, which serves as a reminder of the exhibit’s binding premise: the identity struggles of both artists fighting with themselves as they balance how they are perceived and who they wish to be.

Artists Slawn and Opake. — Artists Slawn and Opake have collaborated on a series now on display at Miami’s the Art of Hip Hop. Photo provided.

Fast facts: ‘Slawn x Opake: Heroes, Villains, and Violence’

In Heroes, Villains, and Violence, Slawn and Opake let their guards down and allow the world to see them for who they are: complex and flawed, but fueled by a default decency present in all of us.