Commissioned by the Hungarian Cultural Centre, London in association with Global Street Art, Hungarian visual artist Fat Heat created the mural Reborn in September 2020 at Alf Barret Playground (32 Old Gloucester St, Holborn, WC1N 3AD).
The mural, which warps around the playground, highlights the transformation and renewal of nature. The design is a metaphor for the regime change in Hungary 30 years ago when the nation was reborn after decades of Soviet Communist oppression.
A careful observer may notice some of the plants resembling the famous flag used in the 1956 Revolution, with a hole in the middle. The symbol was born as freedom fighters cut out the communist coat of arms form the Hungarian flag of the time in protest.
Fat Heat is a Budapest based visual artist, focused on painting walls and canvases, creating digital paintings and short animations. His art is inspired by the graffiti subculture, which he started to get involved with in the late 1990s.
The Hungarian mural was painted as part of the first London Mural Festival (LMF) with over 150 artists from around the world, painting more than 50 large-scale walls across the capital. LMF is about art and bringing art to the people, whilst giving artists a legal way to showcase their work in a public gallery.
The new painting at Alf Barret Playground replaces a previous mural by Hungarian artists iamsuzie and cokestd, entitled Paul Street Boys, paying homage to a famous novel by Hungarian writer Ferenc Molnár.