"Fill life with color." Barley Market in Madrid (2013)
“ There is beauty everywhere . It is a question of knowing how to look with a certain delicacy and value the things that already exist, there is no need to invent anything, all places have enormous potential. Sometimes it is not beauty at the landscape level, it is not in beauty, sometimes beauty is more in the people who inhabit that place and deciphering it is in read people and value them ”, explains one of the five, Juan Jaume Fernández, a graduate in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid and the eyes behind the lenses of the collective . The architect completes the dream team Javier Serrano “Pahg” the civil engineer Rubén Martín “rDick” , the publicist Pablo Puron "Purone" and Bachelor of Fine Arts Pablo Ferreiro “Arkoh” . ** Here you can follow his steps street by street, work by work, photograph by photograph **.
To soak up the culture of each area or country, especially when your projects have a more social character or are in communities with a harsher reality, they travel and inhabit the space in which they are going to work . This is how Fernández describes the process: “The first days of work we always walk around the place to understand it, decipher it, talk to people, have many meetings and try to find, not the inspiration, but the idea from which the project will be born. Project, the result of the conversations with the neighbors ”.
Reality and Magic are two concepts that feed each other in Barranquilla (Colombia 2015)
BEAUTY AND DIGNITY
Suddenly everyday spaces expand behind a new look, full of color, brightness and life, traced by the brushstrokes of BoaMistura . An imprint that is also interior. “ Kibera is one of the most special places in which we have lived and worked , With Bonaventure , in Colombia, from where we just returned. They have been the two strongest places or the ones that have impacted us the most, above all because of human reality”, recalls Juan Jaume Fernández, also known as Derko.
Kibera (Nairobi, Kenya) is considered the largest suburb in Africa . There a million people survive surrounded by sheets, plastics and garbage. “The living conditions that people have They contrast with the smile and the humanity that all the people who live there give off. ”, sentence Derko. In this case, the containers on the façade of the AMREF hospital at the Laini Saba ground in Kibera they were the canvas to create a tribute pattern to the Leso or Khanga , a fabric worn by women in East Africa, and a message: SISI NI MASHUJAA (WE ARE HEROES in Swahili).
Kibera (Nairobi, Kenya) is considered the largest suburb in Africa
“Buenaventura has also suffered a very recent and very harsh process of violence. Until 2014 they have been dismembering people there. See the contrast it produces knowing what is behind each one of those corners, of each one of those houses and, at the same time, seeing the clean look that the people there have, is a strong impact ”. After his first walks, Juan Jaume Fernández remembers returning home without words, the space was necessary to digest the stories of its inhabitants: "these are experiences that, without a doubt, permeate you and accompany you for life". BoaMistura's message, white on red, was: DIGNITY.
'Hairstyles of freedom' in Buenaventura, Colombia. 2016)
THE CANVAS IS A WALL
Following his trail through Spain we find messages that seek to reactivate consciousness, defend joy and transmit encouragement to trace their own routes in The Palm (I want to come back) , Salamanca (Life) , Madrid (Fill life with color or Love what you do) , Santander (Think with your heart) Malaga (Make a wish and go looking for it) …
“When working on the street -which is not a mobile support where the pieces can be in a gallery or a private area- the public is very wide , we try to be respectful of the identity of that place and the identity of the people who inhabit it. That's why we always try to get it back and offer a friendlier face of the city ”, says Juan Jaume Fernández. Since they began to paint in 1998, they have observed an evolution in the perception of work in public space, both by people and institutions. “It is nice to see how when there is institutional support that allows things to happen on the street, to see its potential and how spaces can be recovered for citizens , who are the ones who make the city and those who live in the city”.
'FUTURO' is on Carrer de Veneçuela corner Carrer de l'Agricultura in Barcelona
A MAP IN MOTION
BoaMistura continues to add kilometers and projects to its particular map, with the focus on border places between regions or countries: “These are places where many things happen, there are very strong realities in which, through art, it is not only that they can be improved but that they can be pointed out and with a big loudspeaker of what is happening there. Those kinds of places are always a bit in the crosshairs. ”.
One of his latest projects is made up of ephemeral verses. During this year and next, poetry takes to the streets of the fifteen World Heritage Cities from Spain. After this route a new poem will emerge. Check the calendar here.
Follow @merinoticias
Reading Cáceres looks like this