2012 Cuenca Perspectives Collage

2012 Cuenca Perspectives Collage
VIVA CUENCA

VIVA CUENCA!

My mission in publishing this blog is first to provide a living history of my settlement and life in Cuenca, and to provide myself and the reader with a journal account delineating my reasons for why I have chosen to settle in Cuenca. Second, the posts are my way of staying in contact with family and friends back in the states, and to provide them with an understanding of a country and culture that most North Americans have little knowledge and awareness. Third, the blog is open to one and all who wish to compare and contrast the experiences of expat bloggers living in Cuenca, so that you can determine whether or not from your perspective Cuenca is an appropriate move for you. Fourth, my blog provides another example of how expats view and interpret life in Cuenca. Ecuadorians and Cuencanos who may read this blog are especially invited to post comments that may enhance all expats understanding and appreciation of Cuneca and its people, or to correct any misinterpretations in my assumptions and perceptions of Cuencano culture. Finally, I hope I can convey the feeling of love and appreciation that grows within me each passing day for this heavenly city nestled in the Andes and its very special people.

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

GRAFFITI: MIAMI AND CUENCA

 

Before the plandemic, A number of gringos and Cuencanos had an interest in wanting to clean the buildings in El Centro of tagging.  Tagging is generally when teens spray paint on walls and buildings with phrases like "Jose loves Maria" or "Kilroy was here", "or political statements like "down with the gutless mayor", or whatever phrases or pictures or diddling capture their fancy.  Surprisingly and delightfully, in Cuenca, it was and is rare to find obscenities and graphics of explicit sex like in many American inner cities.  In Cuenca, almost every home is surrounded by enclosed walls, so there are endless opportunities for teen male mischief.  Graffiti, as opposed to tagging, is when some "budding artist" attempts a serious spray painting of content that usually is what I call comic book art forms of bubblisized figures and creatures.  However, these are sometimes placed on walls without permission.


What surprised me is that when I moved to Cuenca in March of 2011, tagging and graffiti were very rare.  Along the banks of the Rio Tomebamba on Third de Noviembre a new monument of stone of no great import was constructed shortly after my arrival. By August of that year, the monument  was defaced in various colors of spray paint.  It was after that incident that tagging began spreading across the city.  No more than an owner would repaint his outer walls around his home, the tagging would reappear again within days.  It didn't take long for the home owners and business owners to surrender to the tagging, as it became too expensive and time consuming to repaint every time the tagging reappeared.  The worst was in El Centro, even the sacredness of the New Cathedral was not spared from the tagging of its lower level as high as the tagging culprits could reach or spray. 


In 2019, as the tagging and graffiti became worse, civic-minded citizens began to organize and step in and voluntarily clean and scrub the tagging from the various buildings and walls of El Centro.  Discussions and debates were held as to whether to punish the culprits, or at least to find venues for the serious graffiti artists to express themselves in places in the city where the municipal government or private owners would give permission for their walls to be adorned.  Some of the graffiti was good and some left much to be desired.  All along the escalares leading from El Centro down to the Tomebamba river, on the walls along the river of Third de Noviembre, and on city and private property authorized graffiti began to appear.


The tagging was greatly reduced, and much of the discussion was put on hold as the plandemic hit the world, and the lockdowns brought to a standstill any serious concern about graffiti, which suddenly seemed to be a miniscule problem.  There are walls and buildings in Cuenca which have the bubblisized art characteristics, and others that appear to be murals with rather literal representations.


Now that the lockdowns are hopefully over for good, whether the graffiti will get more attention in Cuenca, I do not know.  However, some of the problems with graffiti is that being out in the open, they do invite taggers with no talent of their own to spray and mark over parts of the graffiti.  After all, tagging, unfortunately, was meant to be anti-establishment and illegal or unauthorized. Another problem for the graffiti is the fact that it is outside art, which is at risk of the elements of weather and car exhaust, which over times the art gets dirty or begins to fade from its initial brilliant colors. Some graffiti chips away on the plastered walls as well.


My first taste of graffiti art, where I began to appreciate it as art and not just an ugly annoyance, was in Wynwood Walls, a neighborhood in Miami.  The museum by the same name is considered the first graffiti museum.  The complex is surrounded by walls, and within these exterior walls, there are panels of walls within the compound almost like a maze to walk around and take in the experience in an outdoor setting.  I thought what a wonderful idea this would be for Cuenca as an additional tourist attraction, if one could find the land of at least a half a block and the money to finance it.  Such an open-air museum doesn't have to be in El Centro, but within a mile or two of it.  Imagine an area just off the tranvĂ­a, and how convenient it would be for tourists to have easy access to the museum.  Ideas like this require civic and business leaders to have imagination and be willing to think outside the box, and show initiative to get such projects off the ground, and not take years to complete.  


Wynwood Walls Museum now charges $12 as a regular price in Miami.  One can tour it in as little as twenty minutes.  However, I like to study the art, read the captions, and take photos; so I easily spend a wonderful hour or more at the museum.  It is one of the places I always visit now on my trips to Miami, a city I love a great deal.  Of course, I only travel to Miami from November through March.  By April the hot, humid weather is insufferable.  The cost of living also makes Miami attractive to visit, but not as a place to live.  Oh, and did I overlook those occasional hurricanes that streak across Florida.


This Wynwood Museum chooses graffiti artists who paint their exhibits, which are allowed to stand for almost a year.  In November of each year most of the previous art is replaced with new art, often by new artists, which may take a few months before all the previous year's art is replaced.  The area around the museum is bustling with discos, restaurants, cafes, dress shops, etc.  The businesses are generally affordable to young entrepreneurs just starting out. It is very safe with police presence and undercover police in the area as well.  Unfortunately, about three blocks down from the museum the area is gentrifying, so I don't know what that will mean for these businesses and the museum in the future as the gentrification continues to move in their direction and the rents begin to go sky high.  It is also sad that some of the best art is demolished each year to make way for the new art.  I must take a Buddhist attitude on this, that like the beautiful Mandalas that Buddhist monks make from sand, and when completed are almost immediately swept away by their hands or by a rake to show the impermanency of all things.


The photos below are from the exhibit of February 2016, when I first visited the museum:  The first two photos were my absolute favorite.






















As you will notice, not all of the exhibits are spray painted.  Some are also made of material objects like wire and wood, and whatever is suitable to the artist presentation.











































Waywood Museum October, 2021 VISIT


I had the opportunity to visit Waywood Museum again this past October.  The art was more dazzling than ever, and I didn't recall a building on the site before, but there was one this time.  It had more art variety, including some paintings done on canvas, some painted in acrylic, and there were antiques as well, which were not your everyday antiques.  For me, it was an exciting experience.


There is no parking lot for the museum, so people park along the curbs on the streets wherever they can find an open parking space, which sometimes may take them a couple of blocks in various directions to find an open parking spot.  As I parked and was walking toward the museum, I could already see these mammoth murals over-hanging the museum.



Above on the corner is a restaurant/bar establishment, behind it is the museum as these magnificent murals of these boys are seen a block or two away, and the museum is nestled below.  Depending on what directions one approaches the museum, one gets different perspectives of what they see of the murals as seen from the different angles.









As we enter the courtyard museum, we immediately begin to encounter the walls of paneled paintings.





I love the vibrancy of the colors.  Even the black and white paintings are striking.








Many people just walk by and take a glance, and yet there is so much detail and surprises to see in each painting.






Not all the art works or spray painted, some our made of wood, plastic, and other materials.





This work below is another of my favorites.  It reminds me of the Garden of Eden.  The temptation of the sensuous. The woman is robust and full-bodied as women were presented in Renaissance art.  Yet she has a lizard on her arm, and her fingers are like claws.  She has unwittingly bargined with the devil, gained the knowledge of good and evil, and in the process has lost her soul.







































The four photos below are my absolute favorite in this exhibit.  They bring back memories and the feel of Japan when I visited there.  A Tokyo street scene in the rain at night in the Ginza area.  I love the colors and various perspectives from whatever angle I shot these walled images.


























There is so much to explore in some of these graffiti works.

















The sign below is a profound statement, when all over the world especially in the democracies liberty is currently under attack.






This may be one of the largest, most garish chandeliers I have ever encountered, which is made in a traditional style.  It reminds of what may have been found in a gambling casino of a by-gone era.  I don't think Miss Kitty's Saloon was large enough to accommodate it in the days of Matt Dillon and Gunsmoke.













Is that Bob Marley in the lower left of the work above?  Of course, the Dahli Lama below.









Below are a few works done with their cards explaining the materials used and take a look at the price tags.  These are also all in the building on the museum campus.























                                         Below






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It is amazing how art can capture the inner feelings and humanity found in people, especially seen in the young man on the left.












Below is an outdoor disco just down the street from the museum.  It was early yet, but the dance floor is right there in front of you.  This is not a painting.
















Cuenca, Ecuador  


A few Sundays ago, it was a beautiful day, and I decided while I was dieting that I would take a seven to eight mile walk down to the Yunaguay river,  and walk along its banks.  As I walked along Avenida Solano, the most beautiful tree-lined boulevard in the city.  There along the street by Monte Sinai Hospital there has been a large plywood barrier that has been there for at least a year.  The space behind it either is used for parking for hospital staff, or it is waiting to be new construction sites probably for the hospital.  I never paid any attention as to what may be behind the walls.  This time, however, my eye was caught for the first time to the graffiti art that had been applied to the exterior wall along Solano.  I thought this has been some of the best graffiti I have seen in the city, so I share it with you now.
































My final three graffiti photos are of works which have been around for at least two years.

One is the painting of an elderly lady located on Remigio Crespo cattycorner from Ranchos restaurant.

















On Calle Large is the main entrance to Tenth de Agosto Mercado.  Two murals were painted on each side of the entrance, which greatly enhanced the attractiveness to the front of the entrance.




                                                                                                   























Sometimes the graffiti is pleasing to the eye, and other times, it is too cluttered, and one artwork crowds another artist's work.  Graffiti is not very pleasing to the eye when it has seen its time and has become faded, soiled, and tagged over.  While other times it enhances the property or wall where it is displayed.  There are times I see the art along the river, and I wish some of the stone walls have been left in their natural state more in keeping with the green belt walkway and river.  However, one may feel about graffiti, graffiti art is here to stay. Like all art, it will evolve in different directions and styles over time.








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