The significance of graffiti and street art has been much discussed. It is striking how many of the walls in Montevideo are covered with one or the other; in fact, often both at the same time. Maybe they spring from similar impulses, where creativity and rebellion vie for our attention. Painting walls offers one of the few opportunities for citizens to visibly alter the fabric of the built environment.
Time for a confession: I don’t really like most of the graffiti that I come across here. Even stronger, it often feels to me as a disfigurement of the urban environment. That said, I’m more sympathetic to expressions of political desires (often around environmental issues or gender equality) than to tagging.
So far, I haven’t seen much of a pattern in where graffiti ends up, though obviously it helps to have a large expanse of light-coloured wall. Just opposite our co-working space (Sinergia Cowork Palermo) is a large building that houses the Universidad de Trabajo de Uruguay (UTU) — a kind of technical college. It boasts a large expanse of grey wall which has received much attention from local graffitistos. I’m inclined to think that a lot of them are disaffected UTU students.
There seems to be continuum from pure graffiti to out-and-out art. The following tranche of photos starts at the graffiti end:
By contrast, this next tranche flows more into the world of art (some of it carried out by artists’ collectives):
