Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico has what may be called a thriving graffiti and street art scene – growing significantly over the past decade. Many local and international artists have gained recognition and support from local authorities, who have sponsored large-scale murals and other public art projects throughout the city.
With a growing middle-class thanks to the large number of international maquiladoras that have taken root, you even can see skateparks and bike parks where none existed previously. On a typical sunny weekday, you will see kids wearing helmets getting out of family SUVs to hang with friends and try new tricks – in an environment that is wholly smashed with graffiti burners and pieces. And the quality of the artwork is impressive.
The growth of the graffiti and street art scene in Chihuahua can also be attributed to the city’s strong cultural identity and history and the rich tradition of muralism and public art in Mexico dating back to the early 20th century when artists like Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros were creating large-scale murals across the country. In recent years, the city has seen a new wave of street artists and graffiti writers emerge, inspired by the legacy of these earlier artists and by global trends in urban art.
Well, it was all going well until you came along, Ian. No offense dude but it’s like you walk around with a cloud over your head. The negativity from this hurricane has left us feeling blue (or grey) all weekend – just murky, moody skies so dark that you have to turn a lamp on to see in your apartment in the middle of the day. And few graffiti stalwarts will go out in this weather to perform aesthetic acts of mark-making, though there are exceptions.
Meanwhile in sunny northern Mexico in the heart of the desert city called Chihuahua, our editor of photography, Jaime Rojo, found a bounty of new stuff in an abandoned factory. He also met a lot of new friends (see this weeks final image.) Que Estilo!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: TCK Crew, Gang, CEN, Grer, Lords, Ickes, Skiee, Esza, Loupe, Rosko, Kosmo, Dementes, KAY, EPC, TCK MEA, and Suly.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! It’s Fall Y’all !
If you know us, it’s a Mexico-Brooklyn fusion. Just one of the endless combinations you discover when you truly explore New York, where we speak 700 languages and dialects.
It is no surprise that graffiti, its style and aesthetic, spanned many of the world’s cities and cultures over five decades – as does street art today. You’ll see similarities this week between pieces we just caught in Chihuahua, in the north of Mexico, and NYC, in the North of the USA. The styles recognize history, but there is definitely a youthful vibe out there and here.
Shout out to the Brooklyn (now LIC) street art duo Faile for opening Deluxx Fluxx in the underground of Manhattan’s Webster Hall this week. Thursday night’s opening was full of fans, admirers, friends, and collectors – with Patrick Miller walking the line outside on the sidewalk to greet patient guests who were waiting to get in. Wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling Faile, the new club is eye-popping with fluorescent image making and graphic design in the Faile vocabulary – and yes, there are new video games that are digital eye candy with a sense of irony and humor. Miller told us that the new version of their classic kiosks would hopefully also provide a platform to other artists – an open inclusive attitude that only comes from street artists who actually believe in community. With a stage for performances, a DJ HQ, smoke, and lasers – it is going to be an instant New York classic house to escape into.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Donut, Muck, Maze, Diez, Imok, Ollin, Griz, Tee, Derk, Bonk, Retos, Merck, and TCK.
People are so careful sometimes to let you know that certain artists are self-taught. You wouldn’t think it so necessary to make the distinction but it’s often an important demarcation for the academic or self-appointed expert who wants to preserve the class divide, assuring that only persons from families who can afford luxury branded education could possibly be awarded highest distinction in any category.
Consider even newer terms like “Outsider Art”. It’s right there in the name, people.
Talk about so-called “outsider artists,” and there is a certain air of incredulity that such original, imaginative, high-quality work and brilliance could come from those who haven’t been to an art academy. The occurrence is likened to a supernatural fluke, something mystical perhaps channeled through this vessel of a person, not indicative of their own talents necessarily.
“Self-taught” is a source of pride for graffiti writers – taught by the university of the streets, a few will tell you. Some street artists like to say they evolved from the Do It Yourself (DIY) subcultures of punk and anarchists. It’s a source of pride, often hard-won. For those making money selling graffiti or street artists’ work in a gallery, however, they’ll check your resume in addition to your canvas. Its easier to assure potential buyers that an artist attended an accredited, if not acclaimed, university or program, or studied under the tutelage of an art star. It’s about branding, for sure, but it is also infused with class.
The Mata Ortiz pottery style from the northern central region of Mexico took hold in the 1990s when the Santa Fe style of home décor became popular in parts of the US. Originating from the Indigenous peoples who lived here and in this region before the Europeans arrived, the geometric designs and stylized animal patterning on pottery fragments from prehistoric cultures like the Mimbres and Casas Grandes inspired a new interest among ceramicists and potters.
A farmer who liked to explore near the remains of Paquime countryside and to discover pottery remnants in this desert and forest region, Juan Quesada took inspiration and began to develop his own pottery designs beginning in the 1960s. Over the course of the next decades, his work was “discovered” by an anthropologist and ceramic collector north of the border, and he helped Quesada to develop a sustainable business of sales and to spread word of his talent. These prized pottery works that later became part of museum private collections eventually spawned a small cottage industry in the surrounding area that is primarily known for ranching and lumber. Today Quesada continues to create his own art and has helped hundreds of family and friends to participate, learn, and thrive with the opportunity he authored.
He was also self-taught.
So, we lift a glass of tequila to him and all the self-taught artists and artisans – and those who share their skills with others.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street here in Mexico, this week featuring ARSK, Aser, Bianca S, BN One, CFN, Damasco, EXPm, Llario, Jeack, Juan Quezada, Mabe, Mecivo, Neth, Pese, RCW, Seyk, and Shutney.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. While New York suffered a heatwave followed by tropical storms from Hurricane Elsa flying up the East Coast and flooding the subways, this week, we checked in with the evolution of a city in sunny, arid, colorful Mexico.
The aesthetics and language of street art and graffiti are so pervasive, so woven into the international culture in cities, that it hardly surprises us to see it absorbed and re-interpreted wherever we go. We like to return to places that we’ve traveled to previously; it is an opportunity to gauge the changes, the tempo, perhaps to appreciate the influence of the Internet and social media in connecting and re-sorting people based on their interests rather than geography.
In the case of the northern Mexican city of Chihuahua, we see a lively mural program, a small but fervent and well-crafted graffiti, and tattoo scene, and now even a sticker storm of sorts in specific parts of this desert home to international corporate maquiladoras and a proud sense of commitment to traditional culture and history. Topics and influences range from gender roles, machismo, Christian iconography, Japanese anime, tattoo culture, Warhol’s version of POP, empowered female sexuality, devils, angels, wildlife, drugs, economics, and subtly played political critique.
At almost a million people and with its focus on education, its primarily one- and two-story cityscape is only interrupted briefly by a historic colonial downtown, peppered with a few modern glass boxes. Chihuahua is vying for tourists and corporations to come with a redrawn city center, the historical monuments and fountains now modernized with an open and welcoming street plan. But stylistically, we like the margins, where the messages are rather less vetted…
When exploring the street art here, you’ll see international styles filtered through Mexican culture and iconography; However, in the case of OBEY aesthetics repeated on stickers, one could argue that Shepard Faireys’ original fascination with the fantasy of Andre the Giant has as much to do with the Mexican “Luchador” subculture and its films of the 1950s/60s as any subversive impulses from punk that appealed to him in his college years.
Similarly, the one-color small stencil didn’t originate with the Army or Bristol’s Banksy – it has appeared for decades throughout the decorative folk arts here, not to mention the robustly social and politically inspired Mexican mural tradition of the 20th century that is in the creative DNA of street artists worldwide. As the so-called First World de-industrialized in the last three decades, their neighbors have been equally looking for new footing. In the case of cultures like Mexico’s, there is a spirit of innovation and a respect for tradition, an amalgam that may materialize now as something more modern than you expected.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Ale Poire, Ayari Ludeas, Bideo TCK, Celest Alonso, Cesar Duarte, David Glezzg, Joker, Maker, Maru Campos, and Mittuh.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
