Street art in Bogotá
Street art in Bogotá is amazing: so if you do just one thing here , do the graffiti tour. It will put a smile on your face. POSTED MARCH, 2019
See related posts:
– Bogotá’s super Ciclovia
– Riding Bogotá’s TransmiCable
–Bogotá: day trip to Ciudad Bolivar
– Bogotá: walking up to Monserrate
Colombia’s capital has always been full of graffiti and tagging – ugly unintelligible scrawls on shop fronts – and I often used to mutter to my long-suffering family ‘just like London when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister’. Sure, Bogotá has long had that anti-establishment edge ‘just like early 80s Islington’, and trouble with rubbish collection, but recently its street art has exploded into something 1000 times more beautiful than ever appeared in the Holloway Road.
Having lived here for nearly a decade – and passed through the city regularly many years before that – this artwork kind of passed me by, though I have snapped some walls with my camera over the years. The one day I join a large groups of tourists on the walking graffiti tour (there is one on bikes too) at the Parque de Los Periodistas in central Bogotá, and our guide Carlos, a graphic designer by trade and now busy graffiti tour guide. We are more than 40 people setting off to cover several down town blocks.
First off Carlos makes clear we have to embrace graffiti in all its forms, from the colourful and complex murals to the simple tagging. It’s all about ‘making your mark’. Signalling your presence on the street. A graphic pee on the lamppost. For the next few hours Carlos treats us to a fascinating potted history of the artists and their work, the tight connections to music, politics, Colombia’s troubled history, its indigenous past, and how the recent flowering of street art was tied to the murder of a young graffiti artist in 2011.
El Grafitero Daniel Felipe Becerra was shot dead by police while spraying a wall. The cops then planted and old gun on him and bribed a bus driver to claim the young artist had robbed his bus. I was new in the city then, and by chance knew someone close to Becerra. His family pushed to uncover the real facts behind his murder, some police were arrested and top brass sanctioned for the cover-up. But eventually the case fizzled out, while according to my contact the family were given armed guards to protect them from the police. That’s Bogotá, baby.
The outcome of this sad story was that graffiti was decriminalised – it remains a civil offence – and grafiteros are free to create.
I’ll leave you to hear the rest of the stories on the Graffiti tour.
Practical stuff
Graffiti Tours: several companies do tours, and there is a wider ranging bicycle tour. A tour lasts 3 hours and includes outstanding work usually close to the city centre, and a pass by a few art galleries selling works by the better-known street artists. Bring a raincoat or umbrella. Morning tours are usually better weather. Tours cost around $US10 for walking tours and US$20 for bicycle. For established operators in 2019 see these links:
The (original) Bogotá Graffiti Tour
Mike’s bike tours
Gran Colombia Tours
Bogo Travel Tours
Other places to see graffiti: And of course you can seen graffiti anywhere in the city, ie on the Transmicable trip to the south of the city (see my post) which has some birds-eye views of graffiti.
The arty barrio of San Felipe, Bogotá Art District (BAD) is San Felipe, in Chapinero, click the link for news of galleries which often feature street artists.
The Bogotá Graffiti Tour has a Facebook page with upcoming events, workshops, etc. The Antipoda gallery in Chapinero sometimes has stencil workshops and events on graffiti.
One of my fave places is Visaje Gallery in Sta Teresita, Bogotá
Here are some more commercialised artists and links to their work:
Stinkfish
DJ Lu
Erre
Guache
Bastardilla (one of the few female street artists)
Pez
Crisp
Rodez
Nazza
