Osgemeos Bring Their Joyous, Playful Street Art to a Sprawling New Show

“We are like one artist,” Gustavo Pandolfo told NPR earlier this year. Professionally, he and his brother Otavia go by the name Osgemeos, which is Portuguese for “twins.” The duo started out as humble graffiti artists, decorating the street corners of their native São Paulo, Brazil. Now, they’re internationally renowned, filling museums and gallery spaces across the globe.

Their artwork can currently be found at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. as part of an exhibition titled “Osgemeos: Endless Story.” This isn’t the brothers’ first time in the U.S. (the ICA Boston invited them over for a solo show back in 2012), but it is touted as their biggest: a sprawling survey of their colorful, chaotic, and playful oeuvre, which runs until August 3, 2025.

Curated by Marina Isgro, an art historian specializing in contemporary performance art and new media, “Osgemeos: Endless Story” gives visitors an unprecedented look into Gustavo and Otavia’s working process, taking visitors from displays of their preparatory sketches and comic book pages to immersive multimedia installations that could best be described as the love child of Instagrammable pop-up stores and teamLab shows.

According to the artists, these installations are meant to transport visitors to “Tritrez,” an imaginary world filled with geometric designs, totemic sculptures, and Andy Warhol-esque motifs where “there’s nothing to worry about” and “everything’s in harmony.”

Specific artworks on display include The Tritrez Altar (2020), a rainbow-colored, shrine-like structure containing some of Osgemeos’s most recognizable characters; a giant zoetrope that, when activated, animates the duo’s art in the style of early cinema, and the so-called “Moon Room,” an installation representing a bedroom illuminated by moonlight.

The Pandolfo brothers have come a long way. Born in 1974, the seeds of their artist career were sowed when, at the ripe age of 10, they encountered hip-hop culture and enrolled in their first (free) art course. Their first exhibitions took place in various São Paulo subway stations, where they rapped, breakdanced, and made graffiti.

Reflecting on Osgemeos’s humble beginnings, Sebastian Smee of the Washington Post rightly wonders if the twins’ ascension into the world of high art does in some way constitute a rejection or abandoning of their anti-establishment roots, writing that “within the graffiti community, art world success, in the shape of museum surveys and commercial gallery representation, can be fatal to street credibility.”

While the cartoonish style and nostalgia-fueled imagery of Osgemeos’s work can give off the impression that the twins are repackaging street art for a larger, broader audience that still sees graffiti as an eyesore and an act of vandalism, the fun, wild, and carefree energy that pervades their exhibition cannot help but leave a positive impact. “I would not fight to the death with anyone who described Osgemeos’s work as twee and repetitive… and yet, honestly, I love it,” note Smee, adding that, “If success is a deathbed, Osgemeos look surprisingly alive and comfortable in it.”

That’s not to say the Osgemeos’s oeuvre is primarily aesthetic and devoid of meaning. Far from it, actually. Like most street art, it’s ripe with social and political commentary. “Using public space was our way of dialoguing,” the brothers once told Bomb Magazine. “To intervene in public space was our way of speaking out.”

“Osgemos: Endless Story” is on view at the Hirshhorn Museum, Independence Ave and 7th St Washington, D.C. through August 3, 2025.

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