ARROWS

RISE ABOVE (1996 -2016)

From 1996 to 2016, under the pseudonym ABOVE, Tavar Zawacki developed one of the most widely disseminated visual symbols in early contemporary street art: the upward-pointing “Above Arrow.” As ABOVE, he established one of the earliest icon-driven global practices, using a single arrow as both a signature and a philosophy. RISE ABOVE became more than a mantra; it became the engine that propelled him across six continents, into new cities, and through a lifestyle defined by uncertainty, improvisation, and relentless momentum.

Over twenty years, this arrow appeared in more than 100 cities across 45+ countries on six continents, positioning ABOVE as one of the first street artists to execute a truly international, symbol-based practice. This archive brings together the fragments of that journey — the arrows, the adaptations, the shifts in technique, the experiments with scale and material. It reveals the scope of a practice that expanded not through algorithms or galleries but through physical movement, personal risk, and the relentless drive to continue rising above whatever stood in the way. It stands as a record of one of the most far-reaching iconographies in street art’s early era, created long before the world was watching.