Love story depicted through BsAs street art, found in Palermo SoHo[/caption]Confession: this urban prep loves street art. I was fortunate enough to live in Philadelphia, a city renowned for its mural arts program, for close to two years. I highly recommend taking the Mural Arts tour where tourists can see the crème de la crème along the West Philly SEPTA line in a matter of hours. But I personally enjoyed experiencing those murals organically, stumbling upon them while wandering into new neighborhoods of Philadelphia.
This past summer I traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina for six weeks to study Spanish with several students from my university. Within the first few days I was absolutely blown away by the artwork I passed on the streets of the city. I knew all along that I was experiencing a unique art scene in Buenos Aires, but I only recently grew curious about which other cities, domestically and abroad, are acclaimed for their innovative graffiti and street art. I was pleasantly surprised to find that BsAs [local abbreviation for the city] often topped those lists. Other acclaimed cities include Berlin, Sao Paulo, Cape Town, and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia).
Mid-way through the 20th century, Argentinians used graffiti as a medium of political communication. Though it didn't take long before that political communication transitioned to artistic expression. When the Argentine military dictatorship took over in 1976, street art stagnated; however, it made a comeback throughout the 1990s and suddenly boomed when the economy tanked in 2001. Argentina has become an incubator for street art because there are few regulations prohibiting it and because it is generally look upon by the porteños [population of Buenos Aires, people "of the port"] as a positive form of urban artistic expression. In other cities, graffiti artists must work quickly under the cover of night for fear of being punished, whereas Argentine artists can work on the streets of BsAs at any hour of day undisturbed. This allows artists to use increasingly sophisticated, thoughtful, and refined techniques in their pieces.
Check out some of the pictures I took while wandering through the neighborhoods of BsAs. Please ask permission before using any of the photos posted below.
[gallery type="rectangular" ids="409,406,410,407,408"]
If you are interested in even more information check out some of these links:
While Walls Say Nothing, a documentary trailer by BsAs-based graffitimundo
Graffitmundo, a project records BsAs street art and organizes street art tours
Philadelphia Mural Arts Program website
More news on the history of street art in Argentina (scroll midway down the article)
thanks for sharing this, gorgeous and informative, and thanks for stopping by vsvevg, paz, abby
ReplyDeleteglad you liked it!
ReplyDelete