As previously announced, Besançon, France recently hosted the 9th edition of Bien Urbain, a festival where artists produced a new series of murals, sculptures, interventions, performances, interactive projects, workshops, debates, and conferences throughout the town. We're excited to share the atmosphere on the streets of a quaint town that transforms yearly into a world capital of progressive, challenging, and groundbreaking Street Art.

Back to the festival for a third time, Hyuro participated as an artist as well as a co-curator, along with David Demougeot. A five-story-high mural entitled Occuper des Espaces/Occupy Spaces, probably the biggest of the festival, depicts the lower body of a woman wearing a skirt, continuing the artist's work that focuses on gender equality and reclaiming public space. Using similar painterly aesthetics, Mohamed l'Ghacham painted a boy on a bike to refer to a local family photo–a usual practice for him.

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Meanwhile, Marco Barotti's interactive project grabs the attention of local passers-by as his robotic Woodpeckers played sound and visual rhythms while reacting to electromagnetic waves from mobile communication devices. Fernando Abellanas, also known by the alias Lebrel, attracted a lot of attention using the city as a playground to build sculptural installations that create "access" to inaccessible places. Through experimentation, functionality and adventure, the artist cleverly plays with the possibilities of urban exploration and tests new useful forms for everyday life.

Jan Vormann hosted a couple of workshops from his Dispatchwork series, involving the locals in his addictive practice of repairing the walls using Lego. But also, he introduced a new concept by creating an iridescent mosaics burned into the raw asphalt of Besançon. Finally, Nelio hosted an exhibition De l'autre côté/On the other side at the Halle aux Arts in Saint-Vit as an extension of the abstract visual language he used to cover a pedestrian passage with the help of the local community.

This year's Bien Urbain festival also included the works of Anais FlorinBenedetto Bufalino, Caroline Pageaud, Komplex KapharnauM, and Thomas Lateur.

Photo credit by Kristina Borhes, William Henrion, N&K