Colombia: Artists conquer the center of Bogotá to honor their art and make it visible

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Musicians, human statues, sculptors, and painters have conquered the streets of downtown Bogotá to show that Art belongs to everyone and to honor the works that fill the city’s arteries with life through a program designed to make them visible and give them the respect they deserve.

The “Arte a la KY” project of the Instituto Distrital de las Artes (Idartes) brings together nearly 400 artists to exhibit and sell their works in the center of the Colombian capital, giving their work a certain formality.

With this goal in mind, last year, the initiative set up the first training space for artists in public areas, offering tools to professionalize their practice.

Juan Quiroschka began taking his talent to the streets in 1991 with the idea of “showing his art to the whole world,” he tells Efe of his corner on Carrera Séptima, one of the main arteries of the Colombian capital. “Being on the street is like becoming an art preacher,” he boasts, even if he assumes there will be “difficulties.”

In the case of Nuri, a systems engineer who decided not to pursue her studied profession and who has been making wire sculptures for more than 20 years, she explains that “selling on the street is easier than selling on social networks because art is about contact, about sensations.” Ultimately, it’s a choice: to go to the street by choice and not out of necessity.

“There are many of us artists who have freely chosen this way of living and working, not out of necessity, but because we like it. We want to do our work with dignity,” Sergio Bermúdez, a human statue, told Efe.

THE BEGINNINGS

Although the first steps of this initiative took place in 2018, “Arte a la KY” was officially launched in 2020 as a response from Idartes to support the city’s creative sector amid the pandemic and strengthen actions for artists in public spaces.

Quiroshka, like Nuri, has participated in Idartes’ “Arte a la KY” from the beginning: “This project makes me feel that it honors all those street artists who have appropriated public space to show themselves,” he says.

Bermúdez, just steps from Plaza de Bolívar, Bogotá’s main square, thanks the Idartes program for “mechanizing the street artists who understand that there are different dynamics and different realities.”

“The program gives us formality,” Bermúdez continues during a break in a long day in which he must remain motionless for six to eight hours, communicating with those who drop a coin or bill into a small bag.

A golden harlequin, a statue, and an alien are Bermúdez’s permanent figures, which he combines with other passengers. “Since it is a work in public space, it is an informal work, there are dynamics and difficulties,” but you “adapt to the changes,” he says in the small space he occupies.

Andrea Durán, a portrait painter and industrial engineer, points out the added difficulty of being a woman. “At the beginning, it was hard because most of the people here are men,” she tells Efe, pointing out that there is still much to do and improve in the Art a la KY initiative, of which she is a member.

VISIBILITY BEYOND THE CENTER

The Idartes project began when a group of artists who had banded together obtained a permit to work freely on the street. It used to be complicated because the police would confiscate and chase us away,” Nuri says.

“Art a la KY” has not only helped artists work in public spaces without problems but has also promoted a series of actions, events, and fairs – even festivals – in which the project’s participants can take part, allowing them to increase their visibility and reach audiences with whom they usually have no contact.

Recently, Idartes published a new call for the selection of 120 artistic proposals, both staged and unstaged, that will be part of the different events and festivals that will take place in Bogotá in the second half of 2022.

In this way, “we reach different spaces,” Nuri says as she finishes one of the figures displayed at her booth.

It would be “fantastic” if, in the future, Colombians could share experiences and knowledge “with artists from other cities and other countries. That’s the dream,” he adds.

For now, these artists continue to bring life to the city, filling the streets with a culture that takes over the public space, a culture for all types of audiences.

With information from EFE