ENX is an american stencil artist whose pro-animal artwork is raw and urgent. Absorbing wild animal vibes against our disheartened urbanity, she has been struggling for years to make a wolverian difference through her obsessive stenciling and stickering campaigns. For ENX, wolves shoud reign supreme, once again, and no savant stencil technique is required to prove that claim to be true and essential. With her frontal street interventions, ENX seeks no less than to recreate an entire and sincere universe where wolves, foxes and other bears can again roam freely in our cities and in our lives. We recently met with ENX at the CENTRAL LIBRARY in BROOKLYN, next to Prospect Park, to discuss her metaphoric and provocative stencil acts :
PLIPP : What is your view on the current stencil art scene ?
ENX : The stencils I am making tend to not be like the usual kind of stencils. Most stencils I see are processed through Photoshop, using the gray scale, working with light and shadow. This way they become three-dimensional … My stencils are very flat. They are not three-dimensional. My brain works this way better because I am very dyslexic. With my wolves, with the way their hair, their fur is going … More like the texture. My background is painting so, maybe, I am thinking more in terms of painting. Now, back to the question, there is a lot of stenciling going on, especially even here on the streets in NEW YORK. Yes … I definitely think stenciling is growing. The competition for space is increasing because there is a lot of development here in the city andt we are losing the gritty NEW YORK. I love to see graffiti everywhere. … You just see kind of pockets now, like little sections.
PLIPP : How do you position your work in this scene ?
ENX : I have always been painting. I moved to NEW YORK in 2006. The whole street art thing started in such early 90s and then it really seemed like it gained a lot of momentum. There was just so much of it going on here … It just seemed natural … I don’t really know why and how I converted to stencil ! Then I met COST and we hooked up as a team. I had started doing stencil right before I met him and I don’t really know how it happened. It was very unplanned. It started with an X-Acto knife and images of wolves. I just did it and I realized quickly that I didn’t know how to do it the way that involves scanning a photo and breaking it down in the different layers and the gray tones. Because of just the technical aspects, I just stayed away from all of it and created my own way. As far as my work, it has always been animals. It is the only thing I am interested in ! I feel I am getting more into narratives with my stencils in the last year. I have been getting more complex lately. I am going back deeper into them now, like making a painting with stencils or doing more mural sense. I have some real complicated stencil pieces that are made in the studio. And another obsession I have is stickers. In graffiti, there is a whole thing about putting your tag on stickers, like postal stickers. I am converting a lot of my stencils into stamps and stickers. But, in the end, I am trying to just go and putting up wolves.
PLIPP : What is this special thing about wolves ?
ENX : All my work has been always involving animals,wolves. It is part of something larger that I don’t even totally understand. The point is that wolves were protected and now they are not … They are just getting annihilated ! We are just murdering all of them, which is insanity on so many levels ! I mean, wolves are completely proven to support an ecosystem. If you take them out of the equation, then the ecosystem dies … I will never understand the strong hatred that a lot of people have towards wolves. People are very afraid of them. They think they will get attacked and all this, which is not true. There is a lot of miseducation … Wolves in movies and books are sadly shown as an aggressive animal. I love putting wolves everywhere and trying to trigger people consciousness, because our relationship with wolves goes way back ! There are dormant memories within people, when we were all nomadic. In the city, we are cut from nature, obviously … I want people to think of wolves. I am now wanting to create a stencil for a wolf coalition group and give it to them because I fell like I have to give back… In the law, animals are still considered property and do not have rights. That is why I feel like I need to help them as much as I can. I feel artists are kind of lightning rods of society. We have to continue to always strive better as a whole towards animals. Everybody should be doing this … I just feel devastated about everything that is going on all the time … Global warming, climate change, cutting the rainforests … It is terrible. It is unforgivable. So I have put them all up on the street and I am interested in always continuing to do that. I am kind of growing the pack in a sense …I have maybe fifteen different wolf stencils now and they just keep growing. If you are putting something in public, it is kind of important, it is a privilege in a way! This is what I am working on and what I think about.
PLIPP : Are you also into other animals ?
ENX : Yes, I am doing other animals ! The other thing I am really into is the anti-fur coalition stuff. Wearing fox fur is insanity. It is so disgusting … It makes me crazy ! I don’t think that if someone looks at my fox stencils they are going to stop wearing fur … Probably not. Most of this industry is women-driven, sadly … I think if you are a woman wearing fur, you just love wearing fur … It is a status. I don’t get it. There is change happening, though and it will be over one day. I also think about the elephants, rhinos, the ivory wars. But you start to go insane if you are going to just take on every issue ! I try to narrow it down and concentrate on a few key issues as best as I can !
PLIPP : Do you have a message to the world ?
ENX : Stop killing wolves !
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Facebook : None
Instagram : ENX108
Note : Illustrations 1 to 4 are contributed by ENX.
Note : Big thank you to Katherine LUNA PARK Lorimer (author of “(Un)Sanctioned : The Art on New York Streets”, Carpet Bombing Culture Press, 2016) for pointing the author towards ENX..
Note : Additional excerpts from the interview of ENX will be published in a new book due to be released by BRIGADIER PLIPP end of 2018.
Copyright BRIGADIER PLIPP for MAEDIA Publishing for the text and the photos unless indicated otherwise.