The Stencils of barrio Lavapies


One morning I walked out the door of my apartment and found feet stenciled on the sidewalk all over Lavapies, every few footprints they had stenciled the question "Y Por que No?" "And why not?" ... I couldn't come up with a reason not to, brightened up my day and the sidewalk in general:)


So, Lavapies is great, I live in Lavapies. Lavapies is the most international place I have ever been. You walk into the locotorio to make a phonecall and you easily hear 8 different languages. Lavapies has traditionally been a working class and immigrant neighborhood, and still is to some extent, but young artsy types, such as myself, are drawn to the energy of the area, so we come in waves and are starting to raise market rent prices. In addition to higher rent, young people are also unleashing alot of alternative political energy in Lavapies as well. In the short two months that I was there, there were an amazing amount of film cycles, conferences, manifestations, seminars, concerts and much more all dedicated to raising public awareness around issues such as cuts in Spanish social service programs, racial profiling by police and changes in the European Union´s immigration policy. In addition to all of this, another medium frequently used in Lavapies for education, publicity, and general good times are STENCILS!!!!

So, many individuals don´t consider stencils to be exactly Graffiti, they are however an extremely important presence in the larger urban art scene. I like stencils for their clean final look and the quickness in which you can leave them. Of course it takes time to make the origional, but after that you can rapidly spread a message or design. The Quickness lowers the risk of being observed by non stencil fans -- such as police officers. Stencils also have a bit of the "logo effect", people see the same message 1,2,3 times, and it sticks in their heads. Also, in a wall full of tags, a crisp stencil really graps the eye.


So, I love spirals. Time is not linear, I have 2 spiral tatoos that I share with my fabulous sister Erica, and I find them very asthetically pleasing in general, I was immidiatly drawn to these 3 spiraly stencils on calle Lavapies. I pass them every day on my way to metro Tirso de Molina





So "comete la vida" is pretty much just like saying "eat up life", I love this stencil






















"la noche y la calle tambien son nuestras" " the night and the streets are ours (in the feminine form) too".










This "el sueño Israeli", "The Israeli Dream" stencil showed up all over the neighborhood during the Israeli/ Lebanon conflict. I asked all sorts of people in the street how they felt about this stencil, what they thought it ment, and people had a surprising range of answers. People had all sorts of interpretations of its meaning... kind of like an inkspot that was seen in whatever way would make it fall in line with that individuals existing political beliefs about Israel happened to be. However the most common response about the meaning of the stencil was that the realization of an Israeli state, the Israeli dream, would mean suffering for many others.









Here is another stencil that comments on the situation in the Middle east. This stencil didn´t provoke such a wide range of interpretations, the design makes it pretty clear thath the author feels the occupation of Palestine is unjust. Many Pro-Palestine supporters liked the stencil and felt in accuratly portrayed the magnitude of the injustice and the unequal access to resources in the conflict. However, some found the message disempowering, and would have prefered a stencil that put more enfasis on Palestinian resistance.




























Here are two more stencils that I found by la Reina Sofía art museum. "se vende el planeta" "planet for sale" and underneath are the logos of several companies with a very strong presence in Spain.























These unhappy little men in Suits, "hombresgrieses" can be found all over Spain. I found this sad little businessman by la reina sofia art museum as well. This group inculdes their websit in all of their actions... something that I´ve realized is pretty common. This sort of reverses my origional information dispersioin ideas about graffiti- That the wall was like a newspaper for ordinary people- so that you could, for example, take information from online independent media sources, and put it on the walls so that more people would have access to it. But lots of group put the internet adresses of alternative websites on the walls- www.otromadrid.org, www.sonajero.tk and www.hombresgrieses.com are just a few examples. Also, lots of graffiti artist sign their pieces with their website- elninodelaspinturas.com and www.seakone.com are two that come to mind.
I´m still accessing how effective this form of advertising is... I mean when I see websites written on the walls I write them down and visit them, but that could just be me.
















Here is the website of an independent radio station of some friends in Madrid. They just recently did a large stencilling run through Madrid to advertise their programs website (you should all go to the website, especially if you speak Spanish). Before they didn´t really advertise at all... so if website hits increase dramatically in the next week or so, that will speak strongly to the effectiveness of stenciling---or it will be a warped result because Laura told all of her blog readers to go visit www.sonajero.tk




So, these are the thoughts on stencils for the moment... I´ll try to put up some of the stencils i saw in Granada... there were some really incredible ones- both witty and aestetically pleasing.