It's hot, but Jorit Ciro Cerullo—known simply as Jorit—keeps working without pause. From a towering scaffold, he's finishing his latest mural: "an iconic representation," as he'll explain later, "of American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who stood on the Olympic podium in Mexico City in 1968 and raised their fists to demand social and political rights." Completed in just three days, the piece is titled 19,83—a reference to Smith's record-breaking time—and covers the facade of a sports complex in Rende, a small town in Calabria. The local cultural festival, "Settembre Rendese," invited the Neapolitan street artist to paint it live.
It's past one o'clock when Jorit and his assistants Geremy and Salvatore break for lunch. Italy's most sought-after urban artist descends the scaffold, waves to curious onlookers, and sits in the shade of a large pine tree. We're here to interrupt him with a question that's been nagging at us. Among his hyper-realistic works—portraits of people who changed history, each carrying powerful social messages: Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Angela Davis, and many others—there is also a mural of Niccolò. Niccolò is a boy with autism. Just a boy.
We turn the question into words and ask him directly. The thirty-year-old—trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, exhibited in Rome, London, Berlin, and Sydney, with murals scattered across the globe and even in Palestine—answers at once. "The portrait of Niccolò carries a powerful social message too," he says, his Neapolitan accent unmistakable. "I wanted to paint it so that everyone could look inward; I wanted to create a conversation about introspection."
Jorit began the mural of Niccolò in 2017 and finished it the following year in San Giovanni a Teduccio, Naples's infamous "Bronx," on the facade of a ten-story building once known for criminal activity. "On one side of the wall," Jorit explains, "there's Niccolò. On the adjacent side is Diego"—Diego Armando Maradona—"and they stand together for a reason. I wanted to capture the image of street kids chasing a dream, but that's just one layer of meaning in the work 'Diego and Niccolò.' In my painting, Niccolò, whom I worked with through a local organization, opens his eyes and looks at the city. And the city, at last, looks back at him. Really sees him."
On the day the mural was unveiled—a work that also hides the signatures of many other children the artist has involved in his projects—Niccolò's parents spoke words worth remembering. "People kept telling us we were special parents. But there's nothing special about us—except Niccolò. His smiles, his presence, made our lives better and gave us the chance to meet wonderful people along the way. Somehow, like osmosis, everyone who crossed paths with Niccolò caught his joy. They saw in his eyes everything that's beautiful. They know how to truly see." It was April 2, 2018—World Autism Awareness Day.
As his signature, Jorit paints two red stripes beneath Niccolò's eyes. The stripes draw from African tradition and have become synonymous with the artist himself. Through them, the people Jorit portraits on walls enter the Human Tribe—his mural gallery of humanity that includes George Floyd (Naples), homeless elders (San Francisco), Nelson Mandela (Florence), Gennaro (Naples), Santiago Maldonado (Argentina), and others. The work aims to shake consciences and shine light on forgotten stories and forgotten places.
Once he's finished talking about Niccolò, Jorit climbs back up. He returns to painting, as he always has "since I was a kid. Now," he concludes, "the pandemic makes everything harder. Travel's complicated. During lockdown, I painted the roof of the building where I was quarantined—a piece thirty by fifty meters. I have other projects in Naples, Rome, and Florence, but a lot has fallen through. That's life."