Mexican
street art with an edge
Originally published August 15, 2008
Oaxaca, Mexico - Scattered among Oaxaca City's brightly colored colonial
facades, quaint coffee shops, and lavish hotels, there are signs of
unrest. On a downtown street corner, a mural of a masked wrestler,
mouth agape, is ready to leap from the wall. A few feet away, a spray-painted
image depicts a woman with a child strapped to her back announcing
a call to arms: "The resistance is fertile." Around the
corner, a rainbow-colored ninja, sword drawn, bounds across a garage
door.
In the two years
since the Oaxaca City conflict, when protesters occupied the area
after clashing with police, such politically charged artwork has spread
across the city – as well as to the United States, where coffee
shops and museums in New York City and Houston have exhibited the
Oaxacan artists' work.
But in this state
capital in southern Mexico, travelers don't need to visit a gallery;
they can simply walk down the street.
To do so is to
witness the past, present, and future of Mexican art: Many of these
spray-painted and stenciled pieces borrow from the pop art of turn-of-the-century
printmaker José Guadalupe Posada and the very public, very
political, mural tradition of Diego Rivera. Others draw from the country's
revolutionary iconography or the highly stylized flourishes of graffiti
art.
"[The images]
portray social realism," says Alan Schnitger, chief curator of
"Defending Democracy," the exhibit at Houston's Station
Museum featuring Oaxacan stencil artists. "Like popular grafica
during the revolution in Mexico, they show the social issues –
the farmers, the women, the teachers' union."
Scrawled across
Oaxaca City's homes and storefronts – or for sale as woodblock
prints in a city plaza – you'll probably see independence heroes,
such as Benito Juárez or Emiliano Zapata. You may see a portrait
of Frida Kahlo with a gun strapped to her back. Or a profile of an
indigenous warrior with the word "Liberty" sprouting from
his head. Or the bust of a sullen boy, looking downward, his eyes
shaded in black.
These images didn't
always adorn the city's architecture. It wasn't until the 2006 conflict
that they began to appear, says Ivan Arenas, a member of the Assembly
of Revolutionary Artists, a local artist collective.
Oaxaca's governor,
Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, had called in police to disperse striking teachers,
who gather in the state capital every May to strike for better pay
and working conditions. The protest turned violent, and the teachers'
strike expanded into a five-month demonstration: Protesters set up
barricades, occupied radio stations, called for the governor's resignation
and formed the Oaxaca People's Assembly. Several were killed, along
with American journalist Brad Will.
As Oaxaca became
embroiled in unrest, political art appeared around the city –
in a basketball court, along its avenues, and in its main plaza, or
zocalo.
"They became
a community board, a medium of conversation.... The whole area around
the zocalo was like one big mural project," Mr. Arenas says.
"Tensions were high," he says. People "started putting
up messages and images that went beyond the marches."
President Vicente
Fox called in hundreds of federal police to squash the protest, but
the political art continued. The clash had radicalized graffiti writers
and fine artists who, beforehand, may have only been interested in
tags or canvas. But this year, the artist assembly began holding technique-teaching
workshops, Arenas said.
By the time Mr.
Snitger of the Station Museum, and James Harithas, the museum's director,
traveled to Oaxaca earlier this year, the assembly's work was well
established.
"We went
down and we knew something about it – we went down with the
idea of wanting to showcase the democracy movement," Mr. Harithas
says. "But in terms of quality, we didn't know what to expect."
So they met with
assembly members and saw their printing press, wheat-paste posters,
and woodblock prints. They were impressed.
"We didn't
expect the passion these guys had. We didn't expect the fact that
they would be working at such a high level," Harithas says. "We
were pleasantly surprised. Their work is very strong."
The assembly isn't
the only group working in Oaxaca City, however. Arenas says he knows
of four other groups that paint the city's walls. Some explore human
rights and political themes, such as the disappeared or the recent
proposal to privatize Mexico's national oil company, while others
are less weighty.
Perhaps one of
the most common themes along Oaxaca's streets, however, is that of
the fighter – that is, the wrestler, the ninja, or the indigenous
warrior.
"The fighter
becomes the symbol," Arenas says. "They're fighting for
something. The theme of the 'lucha,' or the struggle, becomes much
more broad."
