Art in Context: Murals, Graffiti, Street Art, and Activism in Contemporary Argentina and Ecuador

Creative activism in the form of urban art has flourished in Latin American political and social discourse since the famed Mexican Muralist movement of the 1920\u27s. Although there exists an abundance of scholarship which considers this particular artistic moment and the subsequent mural movements it engendered across the region into the 1960\u27s, there remains a dearth of academic study concerning both muralism and alternate forms of urban art - namely street art and graffiti - occurring thereafter and since the 1990\u27s especially. In an effort to fill the resulting scholarly lacuna, this presentation proposes several possible points of reentry for contemporary study as identified during fieldwork conducted in Argentina and Ecuador during the summer of 2019. In the most general sense these considerations can be categorized into two fields of inquiry: questions of change and continuity in artistic style, and reflections upon the efficacy of this urban art in enacting and maintaining meaningful political and social discourse within a larger overall media environment. To achieve the presentation objectives outlined herein, textual excerpts from relevant studies on urban art in activism will, in conjunction with primary source material, contextualize photographs compiled during the fieldwork aforementioned to create an informative and dynamic scholarly presentation.https://orb.binghamton.edu/research_days_posters_spring2020/1022/thumbnail.jp