SAO PAULO (AP) — Quarterbacks Jalen Hurts and Jordan Love are hard to miss in the Brazilian metropolis of Sao Paulo, with their faces gazing skyward as part of a 108-foot-high mural on the side of a downtown building.
They will face off Friday night when Hurts’ Philadelphia Eagles take on Love’s Green Bay Packers in the first NFL game in the soccer-crazy nation, which has an estimated 38 million fans of American football.
Crica Monteiro, a graffiti artist with more than two decades of experience, worked with six others to create the giant mural that was commissioned by the NFL in partnership with local company Dionisio AG.
The artists spent 11 days on the mural, applying the finishing touches late Tuesday.
The request to Monteiro’s team was to depict the sport with a Sao Paulo touch. Many outsiders and some of the city’s own 12 million residents call it a concrete jungle in the tropics. The artist used orange, red and yellow to represent the tropics and depicted Sao Paulo’s grey sidewalk beneath them.
“I mostly do graffitis of Black women, so it was totally unexpected to do this,” Monteiro told The Associated Press by phone. “These two are interesting people. What I brought was not to put them against each other. I wanted to catch the subtlety of their expressions. My characters always have a deep look.”
Monteiro said she became more interested in American football after hearing the story of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who in 2016 began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice.
“American football is in a position of defiance for me, and so is NBA basketball. When I thought about Hurts and Love up there, I thought of two Black men playing their own game and trying to win,” the artist said.
A mural of similar size covers another building in Sao Paulo as part of the same initiative. Artist Bruno Big painted Eagles and Packers players fighting for the ball in front of a blue backdrop.
Monteiro believes the paintings will make some Brazilians more interested in American football.
“Sao Paulo is different from other cities in Brazil. It is more multicultural. Our people are very curious and very creative,” she said.
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