In the heart of Russia, an unprecedented meeting took place between the Italian street artist Ciro Cerullo, better known as Jorit, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The occasion was the Youth Forum in Sochi, where Cerullo went on stage at the end of Putin's speech and asked him to take a photo together, to question some “widespread perceptions” in Italy regarding the Russian leader . Putin's response was an ironic joke about the fear of being pinched to prove “that he is human”, followed by the photo.
The video of the exchange and the shot is circulating on social media, where there is also rich documentation of another of Jorit's activities in Sochi: the creation of a gigantic mural dedicated to Ornella Muti in the style of the one depicting Maradona painted on a public house in via Taverna del Ferro in San Giovanni a Teduccio (Naples). One shot, in particular, portrays the street artist with the Italian film star of the 80s and with his daughter Naike Rivelli, who modeled in Moscow.
In July in Mariupol, a war-torn Ukrainian city, Jorit created another controversial mural depicting a little girl with the colors of the flag of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic in her eyes, while bombs with the words “Nato” are raining down behind her.
The World Youth Festival was held from March 1 to today in the plains of Imereti, near Sochi, in the Krasnodar region, on the Black Sea coast. According to official sources, 20 thousand young people participated (10 thousand from Russia and 10 thousand from more than 180 countries)