Urban art and the right to the city

Inhabiting the city as a meaningful and contradictory experience implies the possibility of immersing oneself in a world of symbols and experiences in which art, through its various narratives and aesthetic expressions, plays a fundamental role. In this way, the city speaks and tells its stories, recounts the memories of its inhabitants and offers tremendous opportunities to those who wish to take up the challenge of translating its cryptic messages. 

Querétaro, a colonial city, is particularly proud of its historic center, which has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. The municipality of Querétaro, made up of seven delegations, is home to more than a million people who live in the city in multiple and unequal ways: those who belong to families of several generations of Querétanos, those who arrived as a result of migrations caused by the chaos reigning in Mexico City, or who are fleeing violence in other states or countries, or who are seeking employment opportunities, education and a quieter life; those who live in residential areas and those who live in suburban areas.

 

 

And in front of the colossal, beautiful and clean colonial city, in a disruptive and provocative way, young people emerge from its different corners, eager to capture their rebellious messages on the skin of the city: tags, bubbles, throw ups, wild style, dirty, piecing, stencil, 3D, to show their way of thinking, feeling and acting as individuals and collectives who appropriate graffiti as a form of urban art or street art. Rafael Cauduro calls it "The cry of the cities".

The creativity, pleasure, adrenaline, irruption, transgression and mutation of graffiti artists who sign walls, mark territories and protest to give themselves a place in a city that excludes them.

In 2013, an alliance between the Institute of Culture of the Municipality of Querétaro and the painting company Osel (through its director, Édgar Sánchez) generated a street art project that aimed to expand expressive capacities through painting, among young graffiti artists, inhabitants of marginalized neighborhoods who wished to participate in an alternative methodology to their practice.

The delegate of Villa Cayetano Rubio in those years complained to the head of culture of the municipality."Tell me, what can I do to respond to a long line of ladies who come to complain because young people are painting their walls? 

Mural painting workshops led by leading Queretaro artists; identification of suitable walls; dialogue with homeowners to obtain written permission to paint murals on their homes, and to select themes and sketches with the young people; collective creative processes and brainstorming meetings; the production of a new urban aesthetic; the creation of a community between the artists and between them and their neighbors; works that succeed in capturing youthful, vigorous identities full of spirituality, pre-Hispanic motifs, significant characters and luminous landscapes of an increasingly complex and demanding city.

In just six months since the project began, almost 270 artists have painted 14,000 square meters in 315 murals full of stories, sometimes moving, sometimes amusing, but always meaningful. And a new complaint from the delegate of Villa Cayetano Rubio: "Listen, how can I deal with all those ladies in my office who are angry because the young people didn't come to paint the walls of their houses?!!!!!".

 

This creative and collective force grew, became visible, was expressed and explained: "Well, I like this muralism thing, but I don't want to stop graffitiing the historic center because it's annoying to see it always so clean, whereas in my neighborhood they don't pick up the trash for days and it's a mess," said one. The tension between the boundaries of a monumental area declared to be cultural heritage and social inequalities provokes vandalism like a declaration of war. The young people involved in the community fresco project, who know the rules and boundaries, are diversifying their strategies to cope with a growing and threatening city. The monumental Aqueduct scrawled before the indignation of a society demanding respect. Rebellious youth demand integration.

"I lived for years ashamed that my grandmother was indigenous and spoke to me in Otomí; today, I pay tribute to her with a mural in which I represent her and a phrase in the Hñahñú language that I will always carry with pride in my heart: Ma gothohu rakwani," declared another. (Translated into Spanish, it means: we are all important).

On April 10, 2015, these street artists occupied the municipal art gallery "Rosario Sánchez de Lozada" as part of the group exhibition "Nueve Arte Urbano". Their process of social legitimization developed and their ability to dialogue with the city led them to take up residence in the emblematic ex-convent of San Francisco, now an INAH regional museum, through the collective exhibition "Paredes vivas" (July 17, 2015); the heart of the city center was invaded by the "barbarians of the periphery", feared, despised and excluded.

Urban art has provided many of these boys with a good source of income, painting schools, houses and public walls on commission. Others have traveled to various countries as part of international cooperation exchanges. Some continue to paint graffiti; a few still transgress the historic center in search of adrenalin. 

This process has led several of them to take part in one of the great mural works of contemporary Querétaro: the great permanent exhibition "Water is one" at the Gómez Morin Educational and Cultural Centre (CECEQ), where the walls of its gigantic architecture have been used and where the Museum of Urban Art of Mexico (MARUM) will soon open its doors.

The work represents 8,000 square meters of murals encompassing the CECEQ and neighboring facilities (Centro de Arte Emergente and the "Olímpico" stadium), which began in 2018 and was completed in 2020. Only in the dome housing Foucault's pendulum, soon to be converted into a planetarium, with a height of over 30 meters, were murals painted, which took 5 weeks to complete. "We promote a movement towards the creation of art in urban spaces, to inspire processes of social transformation that promote cultural freedom. We understand culture as a web of symbols and meanings that communicates and connects people... We call cultural freedom the ability to construct one's own identity while respecting the diversity of alternatives". (Sánchez G. Edgar. Intersection Nine. Cultural freedom in the creator's lifestyle. Edited by Equipo Nueva Arte Urbano and INCUSA. Mexico. 2022) Footnote: For those wishing to know more about the experience recounted here, it is recommended to read this book, which is abundantly illustrated with photographs of the murals mentioned here.

Carlos Lara states that "the right to the city is an emerging right... after the Barcelona Forum (2004) and the Monterrey Forum (2007), the right to the city ceased to be a sociological category and became a legal category when it was promulgated in Mexico City (July 2010). ... the right to the city is the full and democratic exercise of public space and constitutes an effective tool for halting, among other phenomena, gentrification, "urbanization" and the whole real estate maelstrom that is jeopardizing the future of cities". (https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ctcd2OBMmBC/).

Graffiti is questioned by many because it often escapes the law; here we intend to defend the street art that has evolved from it, thanks to the exercise of the "right to the city" by young emerging artists from the periphery of a city experiencing intense demographic growth and the political complexities that go with it. It is also about defending the artistic quality of these new aesthetics produced through intercultural dialogues (with the participation of national and foreign artists who have considerably enriched the quality of the process), configured through projects such as those recounted here, in which the expansion of codes, links, interactions and languages is made possible in order to reinvent the city.

 

"Now, for what's good to become right, it has to become legal. We therefore need to socialize the process so that these artistic and cultural events, protected by the Constitution, find a legal-administrative channel. This is the big outstanding question for urban art, and the framework already exists: it's the right to the city". (Carlos Lara, personal interview, via WhatsApp, December 1, 2023).

Urban muralism, collective and used as a means of communication by the young people we appreciate in the city of Querétaro, has deep roots in the muralism of post-revolutionary Mexico, emerges from graffiti to confront and offend a society that excludes them and transcends the "artification" of the post-modern paradigm towards the search for innovative plastic languages with social and institutional legitimacy, which promotes dialogue with this society, opening up new possibilities for inhabiting the city through urban art.