The Murals of Jalatlaco IV.

Alianza

A block and a half below the calligraphy mural we arrive at the corner of Aldama and Alianza. Alianza is an east west street that is four blocks long and runs the width of Jalatlaco from Vascocellos to La Republica as do most of the east west streets in the barrio. It appears to be three blocks but the first block is an uninterrupted two blocks long.

The first mural is just east of the corner of Alianza with Cinco de Mayo, the next street west of Aldama. Counting the sections of the sidewalk alongside the mural there are 16 four foot sections which makes the mural 64 feet long and of various heights from 8 to 10 feet. In order to show you the whole of it I have had to make two photographs. The black lamppost is in the center. The chimpanzee is on the left and the ET creatures are on the far right hand side.(With this blog I have no way of arranging my photographs..the blog mechanism does as it pleases. That’s fine with me.) In the upper left hand corner there is a list of the contributors to the work. I believe this group is known by the collective name The Spray Kings. Certainly the bulk of the work has been applied with spray paint...whether an air gun or krylon cans I do not know.

In trying to research the artists I found that several of them were tattoo artists...you can see the hard edge abstraction in the work...and many of them, not trained in the classical arts, got their start by doing graffiti. Whatever the background of the artists the mastery of the craft of painting throughout is admirable.

Unless I am way off the mark the mural references A Space Odyssey 2001 and/or ET. and indicates that the cultural influences here are not exclusively the local indigenous culture nor the pre- post-conquest heritage.

The link below will take you to an eight minute You Tube video of the Spray Kings...a group outing...there looks to be about 50 people here... in which a very large roofless abandoned structure is turned into a collective art work. It is rather reminiscent of Fellini’s Satyricon or Pedro Almodovar’s All About My Mother.

In Oaxaca, yes, Virginia, there is a counter culture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epBJImA7Ci0