The Stories Behind the Colorful Walls of Buenos Aires

Varya Rodionova

The idea to write this article started with a giant octopus looking at me from the window. As my bus passed by, I barely managed to see the signature of this mural: Santiago Ortega. After finding his socials, I encountered many other incredibly talented and unique artists working on murals and graffiti. Here are my top three artists whose works I managed to see live on the streets of Buenos Aires.

The work of Santiago Ortega was the first one I saw. His purple octopus on the side of a fish restaurant on the very edge of barrio Palermo Hollywood was the brightest spot of the whole street, and certainly very attractive for the visitors. For this reason, it has become popular for many restaurants, bars and shops, especially in Palermo, to order murals for their buildings’ front facades, which has made the neighborhood so much more lively and colorful.

Looking more through Santiago’s work, I have noticed many elements of nature in his murals. He has done many murals

of various colorful birds, tropical animals and plants. The most captivating part of his work for me has been the style and line work like on the octopus mural, and a great choice of bright contrasting colors. However, Santiago’s work is not only in murals – he has many fun mixed-technique paintings of cities and great tattoos!

I first saw the works of the second artist, Joaquin Torres Zavaleta, also called Bater, on the internet through other artists’ connections and collaborations. However, his unique graffiti made me immediately head to the outskirts of the city to Barrio Parque Chacabuco to see his work live. In his interview with Buenos Aires Street Art, Bater says that his inspirations are 16th-century Flemish masters Pieter Bruegel and Hiëronymus Bosch, and it is definitely very visible in his works. They are surreal, with numerous characters and elements intertwined with each oth-

er in seemingly chaotic ways, but creating together a complete picture. Bater also incorporates many natural elements in his works – tropical flowers and plants, as well as some animals and body parts, such as hands, hearts, and eyes. Another very recognizable characteristic feature of Bater’s work is cyclops. In the same interview with Buenos Aires Street Art, Bater says that the eye for him is “a method of communication, a form of interaction between the person who looks at the wall and the wall or the character itself”.

Very often, Bater’s works have an important message and meaning behind them. The graffiti that I managed to see, painted by him and other members of the TNG crew of graffiti artists that he was a part of, was built in 2013 and dedicated to the 30 years of Democracy in Argentina. The artwork is called ‘Libertad y Conciencia’, ‘Freedom and Consciousness’, and all of its elements have a lot of meaning behind it. According to the article Democracia Argentina: Muralismo de THG by Buenos Aires Street Art, the hands represent the work of the men, and the chains – the end of repression, while the traditional argentine animals in the center symbolize the freedom in every environment: water, air and earth illustrated by a surubi fish, a condor and a jaguar respectively. Coming to see the mural, I did not expect much, since it has been 9 years since it was painted. However, it remained bright and colorful, and only a little bit was covered at the bottom with the fresh graffiti of others. Children were playing football right by the wall, on the other side of which I saw a sports club. The graffiti

was under the highway in the middle of the park Chacabuco, and its beauty certainly enhanced the surroundings.

When visiting the international literary festival of Buenos Aires in Centro Cultural Recoleta, I saw a whole room dedicated to the artwork of Cabaio Spirito, another street artist from Buenos Aires, whose characteristic works are made through numerous stencils that combine images, portraits, messages and geometric forms of various bright colors. The room in the cultural center has long become a popular place for aesthetic photos, but the message behind this and many other works of Cabaio Spirito is much more important. He has done numerous works all over the world and was even invited by Bushwick Collective to paint a mural in Brooklyn, New York. In his work in Bushwick, Cabaio portrayed the people that the big cities usually want to hide away, and move from their center to the outskirts: immigrants, transgender people, and refugees. That message makes the viewer look differently at his mural in Centro Cultural Recoleta, where he has portrayed the faces of many Afro Argentines. Cabaio Spirito has also worked on the walls of the stadium of La Boca Juniors, as well as many bars and other public places in Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Salvador de Bahia, Barcelona, Valencia, Mexico, and New York City.

It has been an amazing experience to find out more about the people behind my favorite colorful murals and graffiti in Buenos Aires. Each work was remarkable and unique in its own way, just like the life stories behind them.