Mode2

• 

  From: Mode2

  • Shown: 1 WeActivist
  • 

Mode 2 was born in Mauritius in 1967, he moved to the UK in 1976 just as punk had started its own cultural revolution, while reggae and dub where ever so present in the neighbourhood in Lewisham, South East London.

After his school exams in summer ‘84, he started hanging out at Covent Garden, the hub of the London Hip Hop scene. His drawing ability led him to pick up the marker and spray-can, and he was soon trying to make a name for himself, as part of a crew called The Chrome Angelz. After that summer - everything else became secondary; He would skip school just to travel to Paris, with money earned from his first commissioned jobs, and there, alongside the legendary Bando, he became part of that small group of first generation European graffiti-writers who set down the foundations.

Meeting Swifty at the end of ’96, was another turning point in his life. It got him back into the London scene again, though from a different perspective than in his previous years in Hip Hop, which led on to other collaborations with the likes of Ross Allen and Jazztronik in Japan.

He’s always been obsessed by the female figure, which he seems to really enjoy drawing, whether from his own imagination, as life drawing, from his own photos, or even resorting to the odd sample once in a while. He tries not to have a fixation on any given body-type or shape, trying to draw more natural curves, while also trying to push for an indeterminate racial type which makes it easier for the female spectator to identify with.