STREET ART, Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires - Today was unusually cold for Buenos Aires (around 8°C) and, as I was walking to the gym, a small flock of beautiful green parakeets flew overhead and landed in what looked like a cocoa tree. As they noisily picked at the fruit that was left on the tree, a group of people gathered to watch and discuss. There’s always something interesting to look at outside here, and it gives strangers a good excuse to have a conversation.

In Buenos Aires public life is engaging and that translates to the art. There seem to be some exceptional street artists working here judging from the examples you can find when wandering around. This isn’t your average graffiti: the quality of some of the work is extremely high. It ranges from stencil to free-hand, and cartoon to lyrical. 

I guess you could link this to the Latin American muralist tradition, and it would be a pretty valid connection. But I think the street art here speaks more to the urge to transform public spaces into works of art, to make something spectacular out of a piece of crumbling wall, and to make someone stop and take notice of a space that used to be only “in between.”

So with this strong presence of street art here, it was no surprise that, as part of its 60th anniversary celebrations, Puma chose to sponsor the Urban Festival of Street Art in Buenos Aires this past May 24 and 25. 

Nathan Tichenor