Brazilian Animation is Taking Over Times Square

It’s not every month that New York City, a foundational birthplace of street art, gets to witness Brazilian graffiti artists and animators at work.

Enter the Times Square Advertising Coalition and Times Square Arts’ “Midnight Moment” showcase, currently screening Parallel Connection — an animated piece by Sao Paulo-based studio Birdo based on the artwork of Brazilian graffiti brothers Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo, better known as OSGEMEOS — on a widescreen canvas like no other.

The piece, explained OSGEMEOS in their artistic statement, is an attempt to tap into the creative and joyful side of people’s personalities which can be visualized through dreams. “The dream world is the one place where every person in the universe can be connected if they can just break the barriers between imagination and the physical world.”

Parallel Connection can be seen in Manhattan’s Times Square through the end of August on 45 screens across 14 blocks, screening nightly at 11:57pm.

Birdo also helped to recently bring to life director Fons Schiedon’s motion-comic reimagining of Mozart’s timeless The Magic Flute, which Cartoon Brew examined. But exporting the well-known iconography of Brazil’s OSGEMEOS to the Big Apple’s sprawling electronic billboards is something of a next-level crossover.

“This is a huge achievement for Brazilian art and animation in general, and we are so happy to be part of it,” Birdo co-founder Paulo Muppet told Cartoon Brew.