PUBLIC ART IN
THE AMERICAS

Introduction

Mirko Lauer:
Peru’s Fine Art
of Flag Washing

John Pitman Weber:
Out of the Studio,
Into the Streets

José Luis Soto and
Isa Campos Castañeda:
Mosaic Opening Night

Dora Andrade:
Brazilian Movement Gives Girls Dignity

María Galindo:
Bolivian Debtors
a Creative Force

Coco Fusco:
Now Playing:
Exotic People

Michael Schnorr:
Border Works
Tie Local to Global

María Esther Francia:
Uruguayan Youths
With Unruly Tastes

Slideshow:
Mosaic of the Americas

Books

Home: AMERICAS.ORG   September 2001  

Uruguayan Youths With Unruly Tastes

María Esther Francia is a painter and illustrator whose work has been exhibited and published mostly in Uruguay and Mexico. In 1969, her husband was assassinated in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital, for his social-justice activism. During the nation’s military dictatorship, which began in 1973, she was imprisoned three times. She gave birth to her youngest child in jail before fleeing the country in 1976. She settled in Stockholm, where she earned college degrees in acting and preschool teaching, and later in Mexico. In 1985, when the dictatorship ended, she returned to her country, where she earned a fine-arts degree from the University of Eastern Uruguay. Jenny Finden translated this essay from Spanish.

As part of a restoration project in an old Montevideo neighborhood called Reus, students and professors at the city’s School of Fine Arts are creating large ceramic flowerpots and hanging them off balconies. The flowerpots are adding color and beauty to everyday life, raising the neighborhood’s self-esteem, promoting education and even attracting tourists.

Society ought to recognize such potential in another form of public art: graffiti. In recent years, young Uruguayans have discovered blank canvasses everywhere, showing a unique creativity that marginalization and free time affords. This art form relies on imaginative and to-the-point messages, giving it greater emotional impact than studio work.

The graffiti artists have worked tirelessly in the face of police repression resembling what occurred during the nation’s dictatorship, when a graffiti piece could land the suspected creators in prison.

The artists often paint for their peers, working intimately in a secret visual language. The shapes of their letters contain messages difficult for outsiders to decipher. There are reasons archaeologists get excited about etchings from the past: The messages link distant generations, and the codes form an aesthetic that stands on its own, without asking permission.

To those of us who don’t understand the codes, the expressive power often lies not in words but in the manipulation of color and shapes. On the rare occasions we can recognize phrases, words and caricatures easily, we often see denunciations of what’s happening in society, no doubt the reason authorities don’t tolerate the work.

The artists deserve credit for beautifying their neighborhoods, developing their creativity and expressing themselves—especially these days, when young people have such a hard time getting an education and engaging in civic activity. Art schools and government officials should embrace graffiti as much as they do flowerpots.

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