Call Parade sponsored by Vivo

In São Paulo, there is now a reason to dial through a public phone rather than a personal. Sponsored by Brazilian telecommunication company Vivo, Call Parade – a spin off the well-known CowParade exhibition – is a collaborative art project that uses public phone booths as its medium. 100 phone booths in the city have been commissioned to 100 artists, along with complete creative license to decorate, paint, and inspire. The egg-shaped covers of the phone booths make a wonderful canvas, with both an interior and exterior surface to display the art. The range of ideas spans the simple and graphic to the realistic and intensely complex. One design treats the booth as a frog’s mouth, the outside a speckled green with protruding eyes and the inside a watermelon pink. Another sports a frighteningly lifelike depiction of the human brain, complete with sulci and gyri, and a psychedelic explosion of color on the inside. Not only do the designs cover much artistic geography, but they also honor a variety of cultural icons including Pac-Man, Japanese daruma, and Pop Art comic strips. Since visiting all 100 phone booths is quite a feat, Vivo has uploaded each design in full with its given title, the artist’s name and bio, and the location of the booth. The public is also able to voice its enthusiasm for the project and the contributing artists by voting for its favorite design.

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