INTERVIEW
Chloé Biocca
Mythology meets 90s nostalgia
Illustrator and designer, Chloé Biocca, is the artist behind this year’s MURAL Festival, a spectacular public art festival held in Montreal celebrating street art in all its glory, featuring large scale murals, digital installations, music and more.
Chloé is part of our 2023 Future Makers cohort. Her background in art direction and design has come together with her more recent illustrative practice to produce a series of bold and fantastical illustrations, icons and type that form part of the design system for this year’s festival identity. A joy to see this combination on such a large scale.
We spoke to Chloé about getting stuck into this epic brief and the inspirations behind it, exploring a more instinctual creation process, and her childhood Disney icon Hercules!
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I ended up mixing different influences. Peruvian, Greek and Egyptian mythology, 90’s nostalgia, urban fashion, androgyny, and carnival energy! The character's morphologies and expression also hint to my childhood Disney favorite, Hercules, (which will forever be imprinted in my subconscious).
– Chloé Biocca
Tell us about the briefing process first of all, how did the project come about?
Mural Festival approached me about collaborating together on this year’s edition, for the surrealist and abstracted nature of my illustrations and my experience as an art director creating entire visual identities.
They had a clear vision, aiming for a very colorful, eccentric and sexy visual identity that would reflect the vibrant crowd that attends the festival each year. The ask was to create a unique visual universe, composed of many characters and elements, that went a bit beyond my usual work. To quote Nico Munn, one of the co-founders of the festival: “We want you to go “crazy” with your imagination and surprise us!!”. This creative direction was super inspiring and led to a very liberating creative process, where I ended up approaching things from a more instinctual perspective, allowing influences and inspirations to blend in an organic way.
What was your starting point and inspiration?
When we started this project, I had been living in Peru for 5 months and had been inspired by all of the ancient pre-columbian cosmologies and mythological figures, often complex, profoundly animist and of anthropomorphic nature. During a conversation with Nico and Catherine (head of communications at Mural), the idea of creating mythological characters sparked a lot of interest for me. Later on, with the organic creative process, I ended up mixing different influences: Peruvian, Greek and Egyptian mythology, 90’s nostalgia, urban fashion, androgyny, and carnival energy! The character's morphologies and expression also hint to my childhood Disney favorite: “Hercules” (which will forever be imprinted in my subconscious).
Did you find that your background in creation direction influenced how you approached the project?
Yes it did! In the past I have created many different illustrative systems for different festivals and restaurants, whose structure got more and more complex over time. The breadth of the visual campaign and the need for various items felt like an opportunity to bring this type of creative process a step further. This illustrative system is the most involved one so far, with a set of 6 characters, 13 icons, 9 borders, 3 ornaments, 3 text dividers for a total of 34 diverse illustrations, both figurative and abstract, that provide a wide range of uses within Mural Festival’s widespread branding campaign.
L: ARYZ (@mr_aryz)
R: Osheen Siva (@osheen.siva)
Was there anything you learned about your work along the way?
This project made me realise that when I listen to my instincts, and allow the weird processes my subconscious naturally accomplishes, mixing together its own inspirations rather than over-intellectualising or conceptualising. It allows my artistic nature to rise in my process, and actually often serves the project way more than I think it will, with a happier clients and unique final illustrations that stand out. The inexplicable magic that happens when you’re in a true state of joy and your craft shines through.
Has the experience spurred you on to explore something else?
This project has inspired me to explore more instinctual processes into my personal works, and loosen the grip on over-conceptualising. It has also inspired me to explore anthropomorphism further with illustration, oil painting and sculpture.
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The festival runs 6-16 June and takes place along the Saint-Laurent Boulevard, Montreal.
The social media visual assets, website design and videos have been developed collaboratively between the communications team at Mural and the Montreal-based creative agency, Nouvelle Idée, using the visual identity created by Chloé Biocca.
About Chloé Biocca
Illustrator and designer Chloé Biocca creates striking and surreal compositions, using meandering shapes, soft gradients and texture to craft a subtle and ethereal finish. Playful, conceptual and abstract, lends itself to a wide range of outputs from posters and EP covers, to packaging, branding, editorial and much more.
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