walls/murals
Walls are apartheid.
Yeah, I know. Apartheid is a strong word, but just like swearwords are justified in some contexts (e.g. a hammer falling on your big toe or as a way of primitive male-bonding while watching a soccer match in a stadium with songs, beer, peanuts, the works), strong political words also have a place in my vocabulary.
Although walls have served humanity as protection against the elements, they are mostly a symptom of distrust towards our neighbours and distrust towards ourselves. Walls are a way to keep us apart from others. Walls are a way to keep us from our own fears.
Since I was a child I've seen walls rise. In Mexico City, walls have been built high, mighty and harmful (cut glass, electrified wire, good ol' fashioned barbwire . . .) to preserve the inside from an outside world of crime, ugliness and poverty (three concepts often interpreted as synonyms). Just today, I saw a brand new wall (electrified at the top, as it is fashionable nowadays) built to divide/protect a section of the housing project where I grew up - la Unidad Independencia - . . . a housing project that was built as an avant-gardist socialist project in the sixties (complimented by John F. Kennedy, who was amazed by "how beautifully this project has been put together").
In the Arizona desert another wall has risen: a steel sheet that fractures ecosystems, cultures and peoples.
. . . And more recently, in Palestine another wall has been built, violating international law.
While structural solutions are needed to bring the walls down (politics have to be played, trials have to be won, and [gasp] uprisings have to take place - let's just remember the Berlin wall), in the meantime what we can do is turn walls into murals. . . be it through sponsored artistic projects or [gasp - again] through clandestine graffitis.
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2 comments:
hmm... i don't know what to say. i was talking the other day with a friend, and we concluded that sometimes young people's interest in art (and all sorts of artsy, hip projects, e.g.: murals instead of walls, etc.) makes them less preocuppied with the real issues (social, political) going on around them. in romania, for instance, there are tons of cultural/ artsy things going on, and young people's energy is absorbed by those at the expense of the energy they would invest in social causes (protests, etc.); also, it seems to me that a grafitti adorning the wall in Arizona would only muffle the meaning of that wall; that wall should not be there. full stop. it should not be beautified and transformed in "a prettier wall"; the berlin wall got covered in grafitti (legally and ilegally) after the wall fell down, not before.
does the wall in xalapa have anything to do with social/ political statements/ protests? a friend of mine is writing his BA thesis on political street art, so maybe I should flag that to him.
Well all I can say is props for Banksy for doing that piece you have pictured. Iraq isn't it?
Well its good to have a back story for it anyway.
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