The streets are talking

Walking through most of the cities you will notice graffiti. Across the globe people adapt their surroundings by making them more colorful, significant and most of all theirs. Graffiti is a voice of people who want to share their ideas, dramas with other members of community. It's also a way to become known.   

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires, Av. de Mayo

Rio de Janeiro, Lapa

The below picture presents a part of Mais amor por favor, the initiative from Sao Paolo (2009 and onward) that have spread through various cities, those graffiti come from Rio de Janeiro. More love please, it is aimed to remind people what is important in life. The man playing guitar is inviting to common dance, dance of peace as you can notice angels flying around him. 

This wall paintings are neighbors one to another. I was actually surprised that the first one hasn't gone under any 'improvements'. It seems like these graffiti artists respect the works of others.

Non omnis moriar

We like to leave something behind us, don't you think? So we tend to sign places where we have been. Now this can be done through Facebook, Twitter and other social media, more traditional way was to send a postcard from a place that we visited, that's how we announce that it's done. At the same time while leaving the place as a tourist, we like to mark our visit in a guestbook, on a wish tree or a wall, putting a sticker, marking our name and frequently country we come form. All over the world tourist do that, travelers do that. 

Graffiti is mostly popular in less wealthy social ranks. La Boca in Buenos Aires is a district that looks very poor in comparison to other parts of the city. It is also a fact that it is not the safest place for tourists to walk around its little streets outside Caminito area. 

Sometimes those are art expressions of common feelings, when else street artists just speak for themselves. The works below seem to be a part of a city project and not just a self initiation. The whole wall was painted, what as a result looks more like painting than graffiti. Moreover it seems not to be political, but cultural message.

Many graffiti in Buenos Aires are connected to tango, but (!) tango was never politically neutral. It used to be a dance of freedom under the political pressure that Argentina was going through, many times in its history. Now tango for tourists is simply a beautiful and full of passion dance that has risen to one of the symbols of the country.

Decorating buildings with large scale paintings is mostly reserved to known representatives of the cities, like below Carlos Gardel. There is a huge part of the Buenos Aires history in this one painting. 

Unfortunately not all graffiti is aimed to be aesthetic. Some of them look rather like a battlefield and seem to be a pure devastation of the wall or building.