Politics drives Caracas up the wall

Published on Saturday 17 April 2010 20:58

CANVASSING for support has acquired a more literal meaning in the crucible of Venezuelan politics.

While western politicians debate the pros and cons of billboard advertising against online tweeting president Hugo Chavez has taken his popularity campaign to the streets and licensed some graffiti artists.

Of all the murals and graffiti that adorn this anarchic capital's rubbish-strewn centre, one creation by the street artist Carlos Zerpa fills the artist with special pride: a stencilled reinterpretation of Caravaggio's David with the Head of Goliath, in which a warrior grasps the severed head of US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Zerpa, 26, shrugged at the possibility that American visitors to Caracas — or Clinton herself for that matter — might find the mural offensive. "It's a metaphor for an empire that is being defeated," he said nonchalantly in an interview. "My critics can take it or leave it, but I remain loyal to my ideas."

So does the government, which supports Zerpa's creations and the work of many other street artists, and which is increasingly making them a central element of its promotion of a state ideology.

Government-financed brigades of graffiti artists and muralists are blanketing this city's walls with politicised images, ranging from crude, graffiti-tagged slogans to bold, colourful works of graphic art.

The more overtly political images tend to glamorise Chavez's "Bolivarian revolution", and his demonisation of Washington is a favourite subject. One stencil painting near the Plaza Bolivar in the old centre depicts a smiling president Barack Obama in a Santa Claus outfit distributing missiles labelled with the words Afghanistan and Iraq.

Some of these images were painted near billboards advertising American products like Heinz ketchup or Pepsi (the US remains Venezuela's top trading partner).

Once darkness falls not even once-esteemed public works of art are safe, with aerosol-equipped taggers carrying out a visual assault on sculptures by renowned artists like Gego and Jesus Soto.

Street artists here, who largely differentiate themselves from the city's hordes of graffiti taggers, say the slow-burning chaos that increasingly characterises Caracas makes it an ideal place for them to ply their trade.

"There's a great deal of freedom here to do what we want," said Yaneth Rivas, 27, a member of the same street-art brigade as Zerpa, called the Communications Liberation Army. Her work, mainly posters placed at bus stops, is more nuanced than Zerpa's. She explores, for instance, the polarisation of Venezuelan society in one image showing two policemen from different districts of Caracas pointing guns at each other.

Their groups, together with other street-art brigades, were created over the past year or so by the Ministry of Communes. Some groups remain part of the ministry, like Guerrilla Communications, which offers graffiti and stencil workshops around the city.

Others, like the Communications Liberation Army, operate somewhat autonomously but still get material like spray paint from the government.

"These groups share the objective of reclaiming public space and turning it into a kind of street periodical that can be constantly renewed and painted over to get their message out," said Sujatha Fernandes, a sociologist at Queens College in New York, who has written a book on urban social movements in Venezuela.

But not everyone putting up images on walls here draws support from the government. Saul Guerrero, a stencil painter who ranks among the city's most prolific street artists, has painted dozens of melancholic portraits of people around the eastern districts of Caracas, signing them with the nom-de-plume "Ergo".

Guerrero, 29, is an anthropologist and aid worker who spends part of the year in Africa. "I wanted to get away from the European-looking faces that dominate advertising in Venezuela in an attempt to trigger people into thinking about the reality of the place we live," Guerrero said.

But his work, which does not toe the party line, has provoked a backlash among some supporters of Chavez.

After his full name appeared in a Caracas culture magazine, some pro-government graffiti taggers identified Guerrero as Jewish (mistakenly, it turned out) and began directing anti-Semitic slurs against him in online forums.

Some scribbled swastikas on his street paintings, reviving concerns of anti-Semitism here.

Guerrero said the defilement of his work was unfortunate, especially since it stemmed from polarisation that he was hoping to assuage. But he also said he expected others to paint over work he viewed as ephemeral.

"I would have preferred for someone to have coloured parts of my work, making it 300 times better, but that doesn't always happen," he said.

Other street artists here said that they also expected their work to disappear into the chaos of Caracas.

"We're not looking for immortality with our work," said Rivas. "Our gallery is the street, and that means we have to hope our images spur passers-by to think a little before they disappear."