Fendi launches performance piece ‘Graffiti’ on the rooftop of its Rome HQ

Just as a graffiti artist is characterised by his tag, so Fendi’s modern identity is shaped around street art. Last June, the Rome-based label invited calligraphy artist Pokras Lampas to create a huge 1,250 sq m mural on the rooftop of its HQ, while in March this year its ‘Ring of the Future' project saw six street artists paint the word ‘Future' onto the same rooftop in a variety of global languages.

‘I see the rooftop as a blank canvas,’ Fendi’s vice president of communications Cristiana Monfardini told us in our March 2018 Style Special issue (W*228). Now this canvas has been reimagined for Fendi’s latest ‘Graffiti’ project, a new performance piece which sees eight street artists interpret the word ‘Graffiti' in their own vocabulary, by writing the term inside a series of world maps. The piece is part of the Italian label’s ‘F is for Fendi' project, a digital platform launched in 2017, which is designed to attract a millennial generation of Fendi fans. The blurring of the modern and the traditional is reflected in this nighttime performance, which sees the street artist’s fluo-spray – including Italian graffiti and lettering artists Brus, JBrock and Lady Nina – bring new and colourful creative life to Fendi's angular travertine marble clad HQ. Now that's what we call spray can-do!