District 13 Medellin Colombia Graffiti Tour

#District_13_Medellin
District 13 was once one of the most dangerous areas of Colombia & now a thriving tourist destination.
 It costs around $25 for a guided tour, well worth the money to see the art plus hear some of the stories about the old neighborhood of Medellin

KeyTip The Colombian Peso (to other currencies) is devalued so to book tours, hotels, restaurant meals etc  is cheaper, plus there is a vibe the locals call Sabrosura (passion & joy) from the people here so all tourists are welcome

 

I went to Colombia to go on the Pablo Escobar Excursion (which i did & recommend) but it was the hotel clerk who mentioned the Graffiti Tour.......glad he did!

Written graffiti was first discovered in ancient Rome some 2500 years ago
 But certainly back then it was in different forms than what is found today as the Romans would write their names & protest poems on buildings

Being an artist myself i can say what i seen takes a lot of talent 

As you can see everything is open for paint 😅

In North America the first modern graffiti art had its origins in the 1960s & 1970s in New York City / Philadelphia
In those early days the taggers were part of street gangs just marking their territories

By the early 1970s graffiti was being used as a term by The New York Times & then novelist Norman Mailer in their writings plus (finally accepted as an art form) 
Art Galleries started buying graffiti.

Moving forward the Frenchman Blek le Rat & the British artist Banksy ( Banksy Museum in New York City has just opened museumbanksy.com ) have achieved international fame by producing complex work with their stencil graffiti

Because graffiti was illegal in most cases (it was underground so to speak) this form of art has always flourished because it took little money to voice your displeasures on many subjects from
 their political opinions, heritage or work / living conditions 

For sure here in Colombia it was a lot of anti Military or Police tagging as most of the law enforcement in the rural areas is run by the military.
There is a movement now to have a stronger civilian police force that reports to the Interior Ministry as a report found 70% of its citizens do not report crimes to the authorities because of the lack of trust

Graffiti 101

A) You generally do not tag over another artists work
B) Letters can be of different styles with the oldest called the Wild Style.... which consists of arrows, curves & spikes
C) Blockbuster is a term for blocky letters to cover a large area & usually painted with rollers to save time
D) Bubbles are letters that are round, circular & overlapping to create an image that seems to expand / bubble up
E) Sharp style are either letters or abstract elements sprayed in an angular sharp forms
 F) Piece or Character, is short for Masterpiece as its painted free hand & is on a large part of wall plus a complex painting that is time consuming
G) Calligraffiti is an art form that combines calligraphy, typography & graffiti which can be classified as abstract expressionism or as visual art
 H) Stencil graffiti is when the artist makes out of paper or cardboard their image then it is easily transferred onto a surface with the use of spray paint or a roller
 I) Sticker art is when the the person takes cheap or free stickers & forms them into a 3D image or into a collage to form what the subject of protest is about

After the armed conflict to control District 13 was done this area of Medellin lives in a time of transition 
Through many organizations plus with the leadership of local artists & musicians the revitalization of the community by means of artistic expression has started the healing process