Las paredes hablan en El Barrio: mestizo signs and semiosis (original) (raw)
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Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 127, No. 505, 2014
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SAUC Street Art & Urban Creativity, 2023
In the social mobilizations (2020-2022) during and after the COVID-19 lockdown in Colombia, the graffiti-projections produced, projected, and published by La nueva banda de la terraza played an essential role in visualizing, nurturing, and accompanying the social protests and the demands. As part of an unparalleled visual activism in Colombia, the graffitiprojections, which began in Medellín and soon expanded to other cities and beyond the country's borders, created an expanded para-cinema of protests, played an essential role in a complex web of actions and practices that made it possible, for the first time in the republican history of Colombia, to create a comprehensive, multivocal, and diverse social movement. The present analysis discusses how the graffiti-projections catalyzed engagement and dialogue and strengthened the democratization of the public sphere by developing an expanded para-cinema that involved textuality and social media, reenergized graffiti, street art, and communal Do-It-With-Others, and developed emancipatory strategies and networks. [En las movilizaciones sociales (2020-2022) en Colombia, durante y después del confinamiento por el COVID-19, las graffiti-proyecciones producidas, proyectadas y publicadas por La nueva banda de la terraza jugaron un papel esencial para visualizar, nutrir y acompañar la protesta y las demandas sociales. Como parte de un activismo visual sin igual en Colombia, las proyecciones que comenzaron en Medellín y pronto se expandieron a otras ciudades e incluso más allá de las fronteras del país, crearon un para-cine extendido de protestas, jugaron un papel esencial en una compleja red de acciones y prácticas que permitió, por primera vez en la historia republicana de Colombia, crear un movimiento social incluyente, multivocal y diverso. El presente análisis analiza cómo las proyecciones de graffiti catalizaron el compromiso y el diálogo y fortalecieron la democratización de la esfera pública mediante el desarrollo de un para-cine expandido que involucró la textualidad y las redes sociales, revitalizaron el graffiti, el arte callejero y el "Hazlo-con-otros" comunitario, y desarrolló estrategias y redes emancipadoras].
American Anthropologist, 2022
Indigenous migrants from Latin America make up an increasing portion of the Latinx population in the United States, including in urban settings. Despite the significant ways that anti-Indigenous racism impacts them, their narratives, experiences, and identities are often erased or collapsed into those of their non-Indigenous compatriots in mainstream accounts of migration and of Latinx identity and belonging in the United States. This article analyzes murals by Indigenous artists from the Mexican state of
Diasporic Signs: Puerto Rican Place-Making, Latinx Artivism, and the Aesthetics of Resistance
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This chapter analyzes the controversy surrounding the creation of a celebratory diasporic Puerto Rican public art installation in Holyoke, Massachusetts, which became a contentious claim to space in a deeply stratified community. This effort, resulting in a broader debate about the public display of artwork affirming Puerto Ricanness within Holyoke, received national media attention focused on the censorship of Puerto Rican identity and eventually led to a citywide ban on public art. However, through the collaborative efforts of local artists and activists, the installation is currently displayed outside of Holyoke’s city hall and represents a momentous victory for the city’s Puerto Rican community. Thus, artivism—the interplay between political struggles and aesthetic practices—can become a powerful vehicle for social change. We explore a set of ethnographic refusals through Puerto Rican placemaking and Latinx artivism, which we suggest become crucial sites for redefining diasporic community, solidarity, and political belonging.
Murals and Marginality in Mexico City: The Case of Tepito Arte Acá
Art History, 1986
Four men sit on a street curb in the early afternoon. They are roughly dressed in the worn, generic manner of the lower classes. Their collective attention is fixed on the eastward passing of cars and trucks through the intersection of Heroes de Granaditas and Florida, ten blocks north of the old city center in Mexico City. At the same instant as the vehicles in the six lanes of Heroes de Granaditas roll to a stop at the red traffic signal of Florida, the four men, joined by three others from the opposite curb, run into the throng of cars. As they approach the drivers, the seven men lift short-handled, wide-headed hammers and vigorously pound them through the empty air on to imaginary surfaces. The signal changes to green and the hammer men return to their places on the curb to wait for the next red light to stop their audience again. This is a ritual of signs, all of which work together, all of which are understood only in the context of this particular intersection in Mexico City. The changing traffic signals are understood worldwide, but only here do they trigger a response from the hammer men that depends on the meaning of the signals, but which opposes that meaning. The hammer men go into motion on the red signal and stop on the green because it is only when the traffic is stopped that they can effect their purpose. Because the action is so specific as to movement, timing, and location, it must mean something quite specific in the geographic context of this street intersection, and it does. The people in the cars understand what the hammering means because it is happening here, in the center of the barrio (ghetto) of Tepito. Were it to happen elsewhere, the same gesture could produce panic at the prospect of attack by hammerwielding hoodlums. In Tepito, the behavior is a ritual which, when decoded as a sign operating in the code of this barrio, means something quite particular and harmless. As the street Florida continues north of Heroes de Granaditas, the first block on the east side is filled with the sound of hammers striking metal. The hammers are the same as those of the hammer men. The wide heads now