A street artist who hangs on to the carefree motivations that ignited the first spark decades ago and still takes delight in brightening up the cities’ walls and the people’s souls.
Hayate
The revival of childlikeness
Text: Zafeiris Konstantinidis
If you live in Thessaloniki, you’re bound to know Hayate, even if you have not met him in person, as he has tagged some of the most iconic graffiti one can lay their eyes on while strolling around the city’s streets. He paints walls because he enjoys “painting smiles”, as “art first brightens up people’s everyday life and later on, their soul.”
Hayate, born Ilias Stylos, is a street artist that has come to master the complexity and the essence of his art through simplicity. “The revival of childlikeness is a simple yet so utterly complicated process that most times people tend to let it slip through their fingers. However, childlikeness is the glue that keeps us tied to our inner needs. And that is the reason I refuse to let it go, using my art as a vehicle,” he explains. Hayate first laid his hands on a spray at the age of eleven and twenty-five years later he still remains a humble servant of the art he cherishes. Hayate does not bother to attribute any unique cause or a particular meaning to what he does, as the art is a purpose in itself according to his beliefs. Nowadays, he has evolved into a professional street artist who hangs on to the carefree motivations that ignited the first spark decades ago and still takes delight in brightening up the cities’ walls and the people’s souls. Colors had always been a part of his life, as for many years, in addition to being a street artist, he had worked as a “color matchmaker” for cars, houses and shops.
According to Ilias Stylos, art is “the key for the reconnection” of human beings with their inherent nature, that is the unfiltered expression that grown-up rules have forced us to put aside. “Babies can dance before they learn how to walk. They sing before they can speak. They paint before they can write.”
Therefore, he encourages parents to give over to the feeling of childlikeness, as only then they would find the courage to break free from all the do’s and don’ts of everyday life. This way, they will come closer to the needs of their children, more than often trapped behind the unbending bars of constraints. From Hayate’s standpoint, education and art are two interwoven notions. “The child that will learn to paint a wall is the same child that will respect it and will not smudge it in the future.”
He has an active educational role, as he hosts a series of art activities in schools, after consulting with the parents: “I give the children twenty different drawings to choose which one to illustrate, in their preferred colors and tints. Through a free-spirited artistic game, children experience the fascination of painting. Without guidelines and strict restrictions, I encourage them to surrender to the freedom of expression.”
Street art, commonly known as graffiti, has been finger-pointed and frowned upon over the last decades. It still is up to a certain extent,” he admits. Nonetheless, he has never been criticized for his work, as “the image of a street artist, a few meters above ground, carrying a special equipment, even though uncustomary, it somehow asserts a professional status, incling the passer-by towards the thought that something beautiful is about to happen,” he explains.
After all, the fact that street art is inextricably linked to the notion of public space is highly important, as it has a dialectical effect upon the passing of time and the city’s life; this dialectical liaison with public space raises this form of art to a higher sphere.
“The revival of childlikeness is a simple yet so utterly complicated process that most times people tend to let it slip through their fingers. However, childlikeness is the glue that keeps us tied to our inner needs. And that is the reason I refuse to let it go, using my art as a vehicle.
Hayate is inspired by emotions and experiences. He takes pleasure in decorating the urban walls with figures that served as role models for thousands of people, such as many of the sports legends
portrayed in his works (Maradona, Miltos Tentoglou, Vasilis Hatzipanagis, among others). These works of art invite us all to nostalgically relive the thrills of the past, while inciting everyday people to become the stars of their own life. A story that really moved him revolves around a 12-year-old girl, who was touched by Hayate’s Maradona graffiti. “She sent me a message after the work had been completed, and shared with me that Maradona is her sports idol and that she’s crazy about football, but her love of the game makes her a target of mockery by her classmates, just because she’s a girl. However, upon seeing the work, she promised herself to enroll in a football academy and go after her dream.” As for the social impact of his works, all one needs to know is that his
Tentoglou graffiti triggered the talk of creating a long jump/triple jump training team at Apollon’s stadium, in Kalamaria, a request that was finally given the green light.
Ilias Stylos does not only focus on sports heroes, but also on the ones taking center stage in the manga and anime culture, which only seemingly is children-oriented, as it conveys complicated social messages that appeal to an adult audience as well. No surprise therefore, that their pivotal themes of morality and bravery serve as a source of inspiration for him.
Even though widely known for his landmark works, he confesses to singling out the ones endowed with a personal touch, which found their way to the children’s rooms and souls. “There’s no greater reward for an artist than a child coming home from the hospital and seeing their room painted as they dreamt it,” he admits.
Ilias Stylos, even though not of a regionalist mentality, can’t fail to notice the prospects of Thessaloniki, and applauds the innovative spirit of fresh people coming from the entrepreneur field and other sectors as well. Moreover, he praises the city’s recent spirit of openness and extroversion, welcoming the new social tendencies that are unraveling. “Despite the positive aspects of the last few years, the city is in need of more color and I’m determined to change these gloomy walls,” he adds.
As every artist, he is faced with inner conflicts and the one topping the list is no other than the sense of void that overwhelms him upon the completion of a work; a void that can only be filled with the
creative process of the next work. He’s sure of one thing, though: as long as an artist remains close to the source of their mental energy, in other words the art they practice, it is more likely to experience a feeling of fulfillment and happiness.
Behind Hayate’s colors and mural works, one can detect a boylike soul that does not succumb to compromise, struggling to remain true to the dreams that accompanied him in the first steps of the
journey. An artist fueled by the revival of childlikeness and every smile that he offers to those who relish his works.
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