Bellos Callejeros

Out there and fresh from the oven, Revista Diners published the article I wrote about street artists in Ecuador. I became interested in their doings after what seemed a long time without anything fresh happening in the art scene around my home town. All the exhibits in galleries and art spaces seemed stale, extra intellectual an overtly influenced by anthropological rhetoric and demeanor. I found myself immersed in the comings and goings of a group of street artists, very young for the most, ready to take on the streets with their characters and poise, without the voice and the eye of any critic or curator, stenciling, painting, inventing, hanging from bridges and pouring paint. Street artists in Ecuador conform a new fresh batch of collectives that defy the mainstream of collecting and art space going, taking it right out to you with in your face antics and sheer joy. Political in the sense that just taking art out to the streets is a democratic gesture, generous for the fact that they are willing to share it, the painting the experience and the act with everyone, no closures, or enclosures, no charge, no fee, no dress code. Beautiful in their youth and ready to challenge certain art notions that might choke us with their stiffness, these atreet-smarts are a bunch to follow.