Each year, the Falles celebration honors Saint Joseph in Valencia, Spain, with festivities and enormous monuments burnt during the final day of the affair in the town square. This year, Okuda San Miguel created a massive work for the event injecting contemporary, vibrant style. And last night, Okuda’s “Falla” was set ablaze. (Okuda was last featured on HiFructose.com here, and he was the cover artist for Hi-Fructose Vol. 43.)
In video put out by Spanish football club Valencia CF, Okuda promoted the effort by telling player Toni Lato this: “It’s more contemporary than traditional Fallas,” he said, “but the construction of it will be very Fallas-style, as it is like a totem.”
Masaya Hashimoto's images of pure white plants might not look like anything remarkable until you realize what they are made out of: the self taught artist crafts them out of the fine bone and antlers from deer near his home in Japan. In some ways, his sculptures are a byproduct of where he lived for nearly a decade, a mountain Buddhist temple where he was given the chance to closely observe the life cycle of plants and flowers like irises and chrysanthemums.
Stockholm-based artist 
Artist/architect Mohamad Hafez uses found objects and scraps to craft politically and socially charged Middle Eastern streetscapes. His "UNPACKED: Refugee Baggage" series adds an audio component, with the sculptures of homes and other structures existing inside open suitcases. The narratives offered are of real people from Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Congo, and elsewhere.