Graffiti in South America & become a street artist in Brazil. Our little two bedroom apartment in Miramar, Argentina had a large open space next door with an abandoned, run-down building and dog poop filled yard.
It was dull and depressing to look at until one morning we awoke to the site below; graffiti spray painted all over the place.
It cheered me up processing the colors and trying to figure out what the scribbles meant, that I had to ask the awesome teen at the time who actually can read Spanish: “For my girlfriend and for my city”. Cute and pretty harmless.
I don’t support vandalism, but graffiti has become an acceptable art form and is found all over South America; decorating subway cars in Buenos Aires (see photos below), Subte Stations in Uruguay, hillsides in Valparaiso and elsewhere.
In Brazil graffiti is legal as long as it is permitted by the owner of the building. Tagging a building (where a person marks an area and puts his name, seeking attention and public recognition) is different from a graffiti artist painting an area to inspire and make more asthetically pleasing – like the white wall transformed above.
You can volunteer in Brazil through IFRE Volunteers Abroad to work on projects with local graffiti artists, many whom are residents of the slums of Rio de Janeiro – the favelas.
You can find out more about this program here: Graffiti Project in Brazil.
