LET THE STREET DO THE TALKING EXHIBITION

9 MAR – 20 MAY 2025

Helsinki-Vantaa Airport – Non-Schengen Area

Finnish graphic artist Ale Lauraéus presents vector collages inspired by global street art and skateboarding culture. The works are created by walking through cities. One step at a time, camera in hand. Graffiti art, tags and spontaneous, humane markings of urban space function as a collective urban diary.

They reveal who has moved in a place and space, what has been felt and what was important to say and what kind of tensions or dreams have been loaded into the environment. Streets all over the world speak in layers: walls catch feelings. They record fleeting moments, local identities, messages from visitors and globally shared visual codes. Street art is not just aesthetics, but a way of taking over space,leaving a mark and participating in urban discourse.

The starting point of Lauraéus’ work is photographs, observations and visual fragments collected in urban space. They are refined into graphic entities realized on the computer using vector technology, where documentary gaze and digital precision meet. The exhibition can be read through the lens of urban anthropology.

The works bring together everyday observations, visual fragments and information generated in movement. What really is on display is what the city reveals to all of us, if we just take the time to look. In the exhibition, the rhythms of the vibrant skate culture and street art overlap with the documentary gaze: the number of steps, routes and stops are shaped into visual entities in which different cities are placed side by side. In this way, the exhibition maps how public space builds a common culture and how similar gestures are repeated regardless of geography.

The black and white visual language of Ale Lauraéus emphasizes the universal nature of street art and puts different cities on the same line.

The making of one work of art has taken an average of 125,000 steps.

The exhibition and online store brings together a cross-section of street art from 16-20 cities.

Jani Niipola, writer and walker

Including three Special Edition -works

Macba Life. A tribute to the skate culture of Barcelona’s legendary MACBA square is based on long-term documentation and the #savemacba series.

Flashback. A visual time capsule of the history of the Finnish Flashback extreme magazine and the alternative culture of the 1990s and 2000s.

Stanley Cup Tribute. A special work dedicated to Finnish NHL star Aleksander Barkov, combining iconic moments from hockey with the graphic style of Lauraéus.

“Let the Street Do the Talking invites travelers to stop and listen to the rhythm of cities — and to notice how the streets of the world ultimately tell the same story.”