Graffiti gallery brings aerosol indoors

BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News
Wednesday, May 27, 2009

"Fanzye" Zúñiga Chávez stands beside her hand-sprayed graffiti mural of a green-bodied butterfly fairy with wispy purple hair. Intricate circles compose the figure´s wings as it drifts up toward the metallic gold paint in the top left corner.

But Fanzye´s graffiti isn´t tagged on the side of a brick wall, and it´s not outside in the streets.

The aerosol artwork is suspended from the ceiling by thick cable wires. Her piece is one of 20 canvases hanging in the Mexico City graffiti gallery Cavemen Did It First.

The Centro Histórico art center hosted its public inauguration last week, although it first opened its paint-splattered doors in February.

Mariana Todd, general director, said the gallery aims to promote Mexican artists nationally and around the world, all while changing the notion that graffiti is vandalism and not legitimate art.

"We want people to enjoy and appreciate this type of art from another perspective, without the prejudice that [graffiti] is damaging the city or the streets," she said, standing inside the one-room exhibition.

Fanzye said she thought galleries played an important role for the free form, open-style graffiti and its artists.

"Graffiti should be seen as an [artistic] discipline...and it can be presented in the same spaces as these other disciplines," she said. "I believe that´s why we´re doing this, and that what we´re doing is a revolution."

José Manuel Rihbany, the gallery´s creative director, agreed.

He said graffiti is greatly disadvantaged compared with other forms of art because of its background - destructive tagging often done illegally - and the sense of protest that many artists express through their graphics and letters.

The idea for the Cavemen gallery came after Rihbany and Todd walked through a graffiti exhibition in New York City over a year ago; they decided that Mexico both needed and lacked a similar place.

So the duo found a small space in the Centro Histórico to start a project all their own.

The entrance to the carpeted gallery is inconspicuous, tucked deep behind the makeshift racks of a clothing vendor. The stairwell leading up to the third-floor gallery is sprayed and speckled with aerosol and acrylic paint; the elevator is like an ascending graffiti mural.

Alongside the maze of hanging murals are pieces of spray painted furniture and small plush figurines colored with aerosol and acrylic. The pieces represent the gallery´s "whole concept" approach that street and urban art can adapt to any kind of canvas of cultural expression.

SANCTIONED SPACES

The Cavemen team last year began searching for artists to exhibit, initially finding contacts through the Unidad Graffiti, a division of the city´s Public Safety Secretariat that commissions young artists to paint murals.

Though the private and public graffiti groups don´t work together, they often share insights as they strive to achieve the same goal - providing a platform for Mexican street art and furthering Mexico´s urban talent, according to Cavemen.

The gallery now features pieces from 15 young artists such as Paulina "Tiza" Lázaro, a 20-year-old "grafitero" from Colonia Peralvillo in the Cuauhtémoc borough.

Tiza began honing her spray paint craft four years ago on unsanctioned public spaces at a time when she felt like an outsider to all the "tribus urbanas," or predominant urban youth cultures.

"When I found aerosol...it was explosive for me," she said at the gallery. "I paint to express myself in my own space; it´s the only thing I have that´s for me and by me."

At the gallery, her mural "Hip Hop," painted on wood, expresses her affinity for the urban groups surrounding the music genre. The mural combines electric green, pink, orange and yellow aerosol with glossy black strokes of acrylic paint, the variations adding textures and layers.

Her graffiti features a girl´s face and her fists, with letters spelling "hip hop" on the knuckles. The word "flow" is spelled in bubble block letters at the bottom. "Flow" is an inspirational vibe that puts things into motion, Tiza explained as she paced around her art piece.

The self-taught artist said she belongs to two graffiti "crews," one in Mexico City and the other in Guadalajara.

"Your crew members are the ones who teach you, the ones you grow up with," she said. "There are no books to teach you how to paint, no schools. The teachers we have, it´s more like constructive criticism from other people with more experience."

Juan "Yoste" Gonzalo Lugo said he still prefers to paint out on the streets, a bottle in hand as he sprays his art onto walls and buildings. He said there was considerable graffiti vandalism growing up in Colonia Ajusco, a neighborhood in Coyoacán.

"I did the same, but with drawings and paintings," said the grafitero, who has three untitled pieces on display at the Cavemen gallery.

The 26-year-old artist has been making graffiti for a decade. In 2003, he began to take part in commissioned exhibitions throughout various boroughs in the capital, including a mural on the side of a political science library at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. This year, he took home second place at the city´s Mega Graffiti Exhibition outside the Estadio Azteca in February.

One of Yoste´s works features a disturbing monkey-like creature with three eyes bulging from his contorted face and Japanese characters scrolling across his stomach. Sitting on a cloud of putrid green puffs, the figure represents the apocalypse, a common theme in Yoste´s images, many inspired by his impressions of the Catholic Church.

Aross the exhibition room, Fanzye´s butterfly fairy floats across her piece "Dos de febrero: Aliento y vida" ("February 2: Breath and Life").

The self-portrait marks a moment in the 20-year-old´s life when she began to develop her Christian faith.

The pale green butterfly floating upward represents "the power to fly, to awaken to dream and to have faith in life," Fanzye said.

She reflects her religious faith in her two other pieces at the gallery, "El poder de tus manos" ("The Power of Your Hands") and "Alaphante," an elephant with wings for ears. The grafitero has also painted murals at churches in Buenos Aires and Havana, and in 2008 she earned first place in mural art at the International Youth Day in the State of Mexico.

Cavemen Did It First has a long list of projects underway, including plans for an exhibition at the city´s Centro Libanés and a graffiti workshop in the Cien Metros Cúbicos gallery.