Brushing Up: A Mr Catra mural on Marlborough Street

Marlborough Street has a new face.

The mural on the back walls of the shuttered Welcome Inn pub beside the offices of An Bord Pleanála shows the face of favelas hero and Brazilian funk music royalty, Mr Catra.

The singer in the foreground smiles ear to ear. He is wearing a cap that says “Família Sagrada Família”.

In the background is a cluster of homes and shops with glowing windows and graffitied walls.

The sun sets over Rio’s favelas. A black cat with an arched back and green eyes stands on the rooftop of a shuttered shop and peers down at Mr Catra, whose real name was Wagner Domingues Costa.

A quote attributed to Mr Catra reads: “Believe in yourself, because even your shadow leaves you in the dark.”

Graffiti on the shopfront says: RIP Mr Catra.

João Adnet, a street artist also known as Brutto, finished the mural on 19 June.

For almost a decade, he has painted murals with Irish themes in Dublin – like the Michael Collins on Abbey Street.

But those aren’t subjects that made him who he is today as much as the favelas and their music, said Adnet recently, sitting on the edge of a bench in Mountjoy Park.

The Mr Catra mural is Adnet’s way of sharing his past with Dubliners with confidence, he said – to show he’s proud of the slums where he was born.

“I wanted to bring something from my country and my culture,” he said.

Remembering Mr Catra

Adnet feels like he shares an origin story with Mr Catra, he said. Both Black, both born in the favelas, and both adopted as kids.

“My parents have white skin,” said Adnet, running his fingers over the back of his hands.

In Rio, about 14 years ago, Adnet got to know Mr Catra personally, he says. He did some graphic design work for his branded t-shirts, he says.

Mr Catra was wise, open-minded and reflective, Adnet says. He would talk about how people should be embraced and accepted for their differences, says Adnet.

“Every time I had shots with him, he always said things that make you reflect about life,” said Adnet.

He would warn people against being homophobic, asking friends and fans to embrace queer people, Adnet says. “He always said it’s part of the nature.”

Mr Catra gigged in Dublin in 2015. Adnet – who’s lived here for 10 years and has an Irish daughter – missed it because he was visiting Rio, he says.

The singer died in 2018 at 49, of stomach cancer.

It feels right to Adnet to memorialise Mr Catra in Dublin a few years after his death, he says. Right after would have been cheap and unwholesome, he says.

For the love of favelas

On Friday morning, Adnet, the street artist behind Mr Catra mural, was on Dominick Street, back at work.

Dublin City Council has commissioned him and a few others to jazz up the area around Dominick Street flats, he said, drawing whatever they wanted.

The artists had marked territory on the walls.

Adnet waited a few minutes outside Dominick Street Community Hall for a shower of rain to stop, before crossing the street to start work.

He pulled big white headphones over his ears, grabbed orange spray paint, and his right hand started dancing around the street canvas. He sprayed colour, glancing now and then at a sketch on his phone.

He was drawing Negra Li, a pioneering Brazilian woman rapper from the favelas. “This rapper came from a favela called Brasilândia,” said Adnet later in a WhatsApp message.

These aren’t the only Brazilian murals in the city.  There’s also the mural on Ormond Quay, which Brazilian street artist Neto Vettorello spray painted to honour the 200th anniversary of Brazilian independence in 2022.

Adnet’s Brazilian murals aren’t about imposing things dear to him on Irish people who don’t want him here, he said. “Of course, I don’t want to take your country.”

It’s more of an invitation to share a love of favelas and their music, as a way of saying thanks, he said. “It’s a thanksgiving.”