An Act of Balance: Street Artist Tüfujeger

Living in a hostel, some pretty diverse types of people run into you. I've met Scottish Red Cross Workers, American English teachers, a Polish couple with a kid who have been on the road for a year, some random Iranians, a Latvian man who is finding himself, and German foresters.

However, meeting the Swiss street artists, Tüfujeger, exposed me to an underground world of street art.

Tüfujeger (his street name) has been on the road for almost a year. Starting in his home of Switzerland, he biked through Austria, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey and finally Georgia. Never taking planes or buses, he insists on sleeping in his tent and living cheaply. When not biking, he is painting. Check out the website of his work here.

When talking to Tüfujeger, you get a real sense of a man embodying the idea of "Everything in moderation, even moderation." He is truly, as he says, "an act of balance." Having studied Art at University in Switzerland, getting a teaching degree to appease his father, Tüfujeger realized that he was not cut out for galleries or classroom, but rather the more deviant underground world of street art.

Ever since youth, he has been "playing soccer and painting" to fill a need to express himself in a public forum--whether you want to hear/see him or not! He likes going to the streets because its a public space that challenges the right to speech and also what we perceive as acceptable or beautiful. Working both slow and fast, he has trained his body to move with the environment that he paints within, adjusting each work not to some preconceived plan, but to the environment, the stories, and the people in each area. If there is something Tüfujeger does not like, its a white wall. He much prefers stories to layer, to interact with.

While he says he does not like to philosophize about his art, he told me that one should not go into street art with the expectation of analyzing or judging. You should just feel what you see. He told me when writing this blog, "Don't write about me, write about the paintings!" Such a fascinating man deserved some recognition though! That said, his works usually feature twisted figures that interact with the surfaces upon which they are painted. Here, in the hostel courtyard we see a figure with a bottle of chacha, some tomatoes (someone was eating them during this), some dice because of a common game played here, and more. There is something fluid about his thought and work. It may seem deviant and even a little creepy, but there is a flow that makes it beautiful, or at least very much Tüfujeger!