São Paulo, SP, 1973 – Vive e trabalha em São Paulo, SP
Represented by Galeria Movimento and Galeria Logo
PIPA Online 2012 runner up.

Walter Tada Nomura, also known as Tinho, is a Japanese descent, who lives and works in São Paulo. Since the 1980s he has developed an artistic career linked with some of the main urban movements in Brazil, such as Skate, Pichação, Punk and Hip-Hop. He is a pioneer and leading name in the field of Latin American graffiti.

He began to develop his studio work studying at the Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado (FAAP), receiving his degree in Arts in 1997. He taught in the São Paulo State school system and began his formal research seeking to understand the human relationships within the metropolis, as well as the relation of the inhabitants with their environment. Since then he has explored the urban space in search of an intimate contact with its geography, architecture and surface. By taking a political and social stand, he accumulates information from the streets, gathering its scraps and selecting from among its contents. This research bears a documentary and historical aspect of the city, mainly of São Paulo, within the artist’s own life experience.

In parallel with this work, he maintains contact with the world of urban art and the academic realm, collaborating with undergraduate, master’s and doctoral theses concerning the relationships between art and the city. He is regularly invited to participate in discussions and lectures, as took place at the VII Bienal Internacional de Arquitetura de Sao Paulo, in 2007. His curriculum includes participations in group shows at important institutions such as the Centro Cultural São Paulo, Paço das Artes, MIS, Caixa Cultural, Santander Cultural, the Memorial da América Latina and the Pavilhão das Culturas Brasileiras, as well as at the biennials of Havana (2009) and Vento Sul (Curitiba, 2009). He has held solo shows in various private galleries around the world and, at the invitation of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he has shown his work in London and Moscow.