Sidewalk glow-up: Pardubice student fixes potholes with dazzling mosaics
Matěj Krajíček is a 21-year-old art student from Pardubice. For two months now, he has been on a mission to repair cracks in the city’s sidewalks with colourful mosaics. The decorative pieces have since gained widespread attention on social media, raising discussion about the state of public infrastructure, but also about the productive use of street art.
Krajíček began fixing potholes with mosaics as part of his bachelor's thesis at the Art Faculty of the University of Ostrava. Since June, he has continued the work in his hometown of Pardubice. Fixing up public spaces that he himself frequents is a worthwhile experience, according to the young artist:
“I try to stick to locations that I know in some way. For example, here by the Sokolovna is the road that I used to walk to high school every day. One of the goals of this project is also to show the wider use of street art and what it can be. That it's not just tags on dirty streets, just something that many people consider vandalism,” he says.
Besides the Sokolovna, Krajíček has already fixed pavements on four other locations in the centre of Pardubice, and plans on adding to that number. The only condition is good weather, for the artwork to dry properly, and a couple of hours to spare. As the student explains, the process is more time-consuming than one might think:
“It looks like a five-minute job, but it takes several hours. For example for this one at the Sokolovna, I arrived at eight in the morning and left at six in the evening, so it cost me a burned back and a full day of work,” he says.
The procedure is that first I sweep out the pothole, and pour cement in it. Then I mix up the glue. Afterwards, I break my tiles into small pieces. Usually I get spare tiles from flea markets, and the rest of are store-bought – simply because they're more colourful and easier to find. Then I just lay them out and seal them.”
The artist shares the before-and-after of his creations on Instagram. The ever-growing portfolio of mosaic sidewalk fixes has gained nationwide media attention, but for Krajíček, it is the reaction of the people in the street of Pardubice that is most rewarding:
“I absolutely love it. In fact, it's something that drives me and motivates me to continue creating. The other side of this project is also a kind of social experiment. I'm interested in how passers-by, the city, and people in general will react to it, what they will say about it. Because either there would just be an ugly pothole, or something that fixes it, both visually and functionally. Even if someone doesn't like the look of it, it's still a sealed hole,” he says.
Potholes are a recurring topic in debates about local governance in Czechia. So much so, that in 2012 the website Výmoly.cz was launched. On here users can submit and track the location of existing potholes, as well as update whether or not they are being fixed. And as it turns out, mosaics are one of the ways of doing so.
