Greek Ann Arbor

Cacao Rocks

From Athens, Greece, Cacao Rocks’s home turf is filled with many of his vibrant and colorful works that are known worldwide. He started off as a teenager practicing simple tags with his friends because he thought it was cool and wanted to impress the ladies. He never dreamed that one day his work be featured internationally and in museums. In 2004, after his trip across Europe, where he visited major museums among other things, he began to produce art replicating what he had seen abroad and became revitalized in street art. Cacao draws his influence in large, from Greece’s state of multiple (economic, political, and social) crises. Beginning in 2008, Cacao experienced first hand the start of the crisis and many of his works reflect its issues that have not been resolved yet. He is also influenced by Greek architecture, of all time periods, and the street artist Banksy from Britain, who he sees as a role model for all street art and graffiti artists. Today, he is internationally known with his pieces having been exhibited in the U.S., U.K., Italy, many street art and graffiti festivals as well as at the Benaki Museum in Athens and the Onassis Art Foundation in New York.

Sponsored by the University of Michigan’s Modern Greek and History of Art Departments and Humanities Institute Cacao, is a participant of the Global Graffiti project, which involves Olga Alexopoulou and Mehdi Ghadyanlo, two other international artists. The project hopes to “to engage the campus and greater community with international artists who offer a global perspective on the use of street art as powerful forms of expression and communication” (record.umich.edu). Cacao completed “Paros to Delos” on October 26th, 2016 which can be seen on the corner of N. University and S. Thayer.