THSA far from home!
THSA member Ringo traveled through Colombia for the entire month of February. Next to it being a beautiful country, it also turns out to be a true street art mecca.
In the capital city Bogota, there are daily graffiti walking tours guided by a team of experienced guides (see www.bogotagraffiti.com). Since February 2017 the ‘Bogota Graffiti Tour’ is the number one activity in the city, according to the popular travel app TripAdvisor. New artworks are added in the city center almost daily; permission for a mural is a lot easier in Colombia than in the Netherlands. Most city residents are fond of murals and would love to have a colorful street art work on their house or shop.
The main highway through the city, a place that seems hard to paint, is completely surrounded by giant murals, filling the walls from top to bottom for kilometers on end. A bizarre story tells that Justin Bieber has been partly responsible for this: the teenage pop star made a ‘piece’ along this highway escorted by police, after a performance in the city. The local scene was stunned. The police explained that he was “expressing himself positively” and that they assisted him because of that. The local artists united and agreed upon a weekend in which they would 'express positively'. The artists worked the whole non-stop painting along the highway, to great delight of the inhabitants who supported the by bringing them food and drinks.
The pictures are taken in Bogota, Medellin en Cartagena.
