Faith 47: The Taming of the Beasts, Shanghai, 2012
Faith 47’s The Taming of the Beasts street art murals painted on the desolate walls of Shanghai, created in recognition of World Rhino Day as a tribute to the South African rhino, one of the world’s most majestic yet endangered animals. Painted in Faith47’s distinctive monochrome language, the work brings the image of the rhino into a ruined urban landscape, placing a powerful creature associated with wilderness, survival and ancient strength against a city surface marked by demolition, rubble and rapid change.
Faith 47’s rhino mural in Shanghai
The mural was inspired by Faith 47’s trip to Shanghai, where she placed the South African rhino into an Asian urban context as a way of settling what was described as its restless spirit. The setting is important: the rhino does not appear in a landscape of conservation, safari or protected nature, but on collapsing walls surrounded by debris, with high-rise towers visible beyond the ruins. This tension gives the work its force, because the animal seems both monumental and vulnerable, present and already disappearing.
The meaning behind Taming the Beast
The Taming of the Beasts speaks to the violence and contradiction surrounding the rhino: an animal of immense physical presence made vulnerable by human belief, trade and desire. Painted in Shanghai for World Rhino Day, the mural places the South African rhino into an Asian urban context, not as an exotic symbol, but as a displaced witness to the demand that has helped drive its destruction.
Research into the rhino horn and ivory trade shows that poaching cannot be understood as a single act in the landscape, but as part of a wider network of demand, smuggling, corruption, consumer belief and market adaptation. Rhino horn moved through changing markets, from historic demand in Yemen to expanding routes and consumption patterns in eastern Asia.
Against that context, Faith 47’s mural becomes more than an image of an endangered animal. The rhino appears pale, heavy and almost spectral on Shanghai’s damaged walls, surrounded by rubble and high-rise development, as though the creature has been pulled into the very systems that threaten it. The title is unsettling because the “beast” is not simply the animal before us, but the human machinery of appetite, myth and profit that turns a living body into a commodity.
World Rhino Day and a mural of remembrance
Created for World Rhino Day, the mural functions as an act of remembrance before disappearance becomes permanent. The rhino, rendered in pale tones against weathered architecture, feels like a ghost moving through the city, carrying the weight of animals already lost and those still under threat. Faith 47’s choice of site amplifies this feeling, because the crumbling Shanghai walls echo the fragility of the species itself: something strong, ancient and dignified placed under pressure by forces larger than itself.
Faith47’s visual language of animals, loss and spirit
Across Faith47’s practice, animals often appear as more than subjects; they become messengers, witnesses and spiritual figures moving through broken landscapes. In The Taming of the Beasts, the rhino carries that role with particular gravity. It is both a creature of the natural world and a symbol of what happens when human systems detach from care, ecology and moral responsibility.
Enquire about available artworks by Faith 47
Faith 47’s The Taming of the Beasts sits within a wider practice shaped by nature, spirituality, ecological grief and the dignity of vulnerable beings, themes that continue to make her work deeply resonant for collectors of contemporary street art and urban contemporary culture. At GraffitiStreet, we work with collectors seeking meaningful editions, originals and secondary-market works by leading international artists whose practice moves between the street, the studio and the museum wall.
To discuss available artworks by Faith 47, private sourcing or collecting with GraffitiStreet, please get in touch with the team.
Image copyright Faith47