Painted stories: A tour through Bogotá street art

“There’s more to Colombia than cocaine and coffee.”

Bogotá Graffiti Tour guide Rey Garcia is on a mission. In his eyes, street art is not only a legitimate art form worthy of a wider audience, but an valuable means of self-expression.

It’s important work. Both Colombia and its capital are trying to present a friendlier face to the world. And for Garcia, each wall is a palimpsest: read one closely and you’ll discover conversations about a country in transition and the voices within it that want to be heard.

“I like to call it the canary in the coal mine.”

Unlike in other cities, street art is not illegal in Bogotá. The maximum penalty is akin to a parking ticket. And since relaxing restrictions in 2011, the city has seen its walls explode with color and creativity. Artists come from around the world to participate; an estimated 5,000 murals now cover the city, and new ones go up every week.

Street artists come from around the world to add their voices.

Earlier this year the city-run Contemporary Art Museum even held an exhibition highlighting the work of local artists and commissioned – at a cost of $10,000 – an eight-story-high depiction of the late Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Garcia and his partners can take much of the credit. Now in its fourth year, the Bogotá Graffiti Tour supports local artists and educates the public.

It’s clearly a labor of love. Like his fellow guides, Garcia is deeply embedded in Bogotá’s street art scene. His personal relationships with many local artists fuels a rich and commentary on their lives, techniques, and themes. He also hangs their works alongside those of contemporary artists in a gallery he’s set up a stone’s throw from the Museo Botero.

An estimated 5,000 murals cover the city; new ones go up every week.

The passion has paid off. Bogotá Graffiti Tour ranks #3 out of 58 Tours and Activities in Bogotá on TripAdvisor and has won the site’s “Certificate of Excellence” for consistently high reviews. Tours run twice a day every day. The second tour is new – added in part for safety, but also to save guides from having to shout to groups from fifty feet away.

It’s 10 AM and ours is the first tour of the day. Each begins and ends at La Parque de los Periodistas in El Centro, a district whose 60s-era architecture could easily serve as a backdrop for an early episode of Mad Men, were it not for the Juan Valdez coffee shop nearby and the bronze statue of Simón de Bolívar looming over the proceedings.

An experienced guide, Garcia speaks slowly and deliberately, giving each sentence ample time to sink in before moving on. The tour lasts two-and-a-half hours and is in English. Bogotá-born but Wisconsin-bred, Garcia speaks with a flat midwestern timbre that catches the entire group off-guard.

“There’s more to Colombia than cocaine and coffee.” Tour guide Rey Garcia

We head into La Candelaria, Bogotá’s colorful historic district where many artists work. First up is a wall nearly a city block long adorned with the works of a local collective named “Animal Power Collective,” or APC, for short. This crew is one of the most prolific in the city; throughout the tour we’ll see countless treatments of its acronym.

We move on over uneven sidewalks and centuries-old cobblestones, past innumerable coffee shops and restaurants that I try to make a note of for a future visit. As an aside, Garcia says the number of hostels in the neighborhood has also shot up in the past few years – another example of Bogotá’s increasing tourist appeal.

The diversity of topics and styles we see in La Candelaria belies the diverse backgrounds of the city’s most accomplished artists. The hallucinagenic images in bold primary colors are the trademark of Rodez, a childrens’ book illustrator with more than 50 titles to his credit.

Rodez typically features hallucinogenic creatures and bold colors.

The comically smiling fish that dance across a corrugated iron fence are the trademark of Pez, a veteran whose works are sought by collectors worldwide. Graffiti Tour founder Crisp, meanwhile, adorns buildings – and sometimes other murals – with masks painted diverse patterns and colors.

Barcelona-born “Pez” decorates walls worldwide with his trademark smiling fish.

Few works in this neighbourhood are overtly confrontational (we’ll see those later on), though many do depict sensitive topics. Guache, for example, calls attention to issues facing Colombia’s indigenous peoples with a blend of traditional iconography and modern techniques.

Guache brings attention to issues facing Colombia’s indigenous peoples.

Further down the street, a new mural by a collective featuring Forero and RTZ pits memories of an agrarian past with modern images of crop dusters and bulldozers. It’s hardly an image of peaceful progress.

Tour guide Rey Garcia

For the most part, artists in La Candelaria enjoy a positive and productive relationship with property owners. Many will commission works for their houses – the paint protects against the weather, and full-size murals help deter tagging. Government buildings and houses older than 300 years are off-limits, but once a property owner has given an artist permission to paint, he can do so without police interference.

A rare woman artist, Chite Yarumo addresses social justice issues.

Relations with the police weren’t always as cordial. And the relaxed restrictions have their roots in tragedy. In 2011, local police shot and killed Diego Felipe Becerra while he was painting under a bridge. The public outcry over Becerra’s death – and police attempts to portray him as an armed robber – forced the mayor to relent and brought the truth to light. One officer is now serving a prison term; the other suspended indefinitely.

The relaxed restrictions have their roots in tragedy. In 2011, local police shot and killed an artist while he was painting under a bridge.

Four years later, Garcia says the overall quality of the art has gone up. Artists working in daylight can see what they’re doing, and the paint flows more predictably in the (relatively) warmer daytime. Working in daylight also helps foster a dialogue between artist and community. Rodez, for example, signs his murals with the names of people he speaks with while painting; many local residents bring food to artists to sustain them while they work.

Home owners take care not to damage the most popular images.

Not every artist is as successful, as Rodez or Guache, however. Paint is expensive and many artists rely on donations and support from the community itself to make themselves heard. And outside La Candelaria, the topics of many murals becomes more confrontational. Though hostilities between government troops and FARC guerrillas are at their lowest point in years, the repercussions of Colombia’s decades-long civil war are very visible on city streets.

The legacy of La Violencia and the perils of capitalism come through most forcefully at a construction site far from La Candelaria. Here, a mammoth triptych by Guache, Toxicomano and DJ LU brims with cautionary slogans such as “Exploitation ruins life” and DJ LU’s “pineappleade” icons. “Piña” means “pineapple,” but it’s also slang for “grenade.”

DJ LU’s weaponized wasps leave little to interpretation.

It’s one of DJ LU’s most well-known symbols. It’s also available on his own line of shoes – a novel blending blending of activism and commerce.

It’s now nearly 1 PM and Garcia has proven there is indeed more to the city than coffee and cocaine. Street art is a vital element in the city’s conversation with itself, and judging from both the local response and the international acclaim, there will be many more discussions – and many more tours – in the years to come.