This year, Akumal Arts Festival (AAF) invited 130 artists to adorn the town’s many surfaces with murals. In providing inspiration and guidance, they offered the formal theme ‘Climate Change,’ a fitting focus for a festival that takes place in town ripe with natural life. Some artists followed the guidelines, others came armed with their own muses. Parallels emerged from the activity throughout. Ultimately, the messages behind the murals of AAF are as unique as the styles that populated its offerings.
Climate Change
New York-based street artist Turtlecaps proved the perfect fit for the festival’s theme. His work features consistently features the ‘turtlecap’ character present throughout Nintendo’s Mario games. He tailored this motif for his mural on the bridge connecting Akumal’s play and pueblo, and told me, “I’ve been painting more sea life scenes to bring highlight to the world’s problems: the polluted oceans, the plastic, and saving marine life.” This is his first year painting in Akumal. “I don’t usually paint festivals,” the artist said.
I wondered if he found it especially meaningful to paint in a town named for turtles. “That’s probably one of the main reasons I did apply to something like this,” Turtlecaps said. “The night before, we had gone to look for turtle hatchings on the beach and we missed it by a half hour after I finished here. We had the biologist at the center take our number down. She called us yesterday when they hatched… it was overcast and the baby turtle hatchlings need to follow the moon to the beach. So I got to play the moon last night. I had my flashlight on the ground, walking backwards slowly towards the ocean as they all followed me, a little gang of them… The mural was my main goal, but that was something I had to do before I left. It was really special.” Touched by the experience, Turtlecaps pledge to sponsor a nest.
Traveling into the pueblo, I met Emily Ding. She’s originally from Houston, Texas, but told me she’s been nomadic for the past two years. Right before Akumal, she painted a high school in France. For her mural near the preschool, Ding focused on the health of coral reefs, another pressing issue in light of Akumal’s increasing development. Her work shows a woman melding into a reef. “We’re all part of the same world,” the artist remarked. Her work typically deals with flora and fauna, and she researches the species specific to each locale. For this mural, she painted Elkhorn and Staghorn coral, which are protected in the area.
Further into town, I met street art duo Bellaphame. The two met in Brazil, where Bella grew up. Phame’s originally from Brooklyn. It was their first year painting at the festival, which they heard about mutual artist friends. Of their signature purple and green mural, Phame said, “Here we have the hand preserving the nature, and then it’s a yin/yang theme where we have the opposite, pollution, the over-usage of cars. The purple hand is actually adding a smokestack. So it’s like, we can either preserve it, or we can add to the pollution.” He continued, “The middle part is kind of the balance. We’re all guilty, but we can try to balance it out.”
Born and raised in New York, Rari Grafix also joined the AAF family in 2019. Her mural, across the street from Akumal’s community center, spoke to environmentalism as well. “In general, I tend to paint skateboards and little creatures and this female character,” that represents herself, Rari told me. She gestured to the smaller creatures populating the mural and said, “these little guys are actually called my ‘monstahs.’” The monstahs represent the roughly 1200 students she instructs in a program she created, in addition to her daugher, her nieces, her nephews.
Rari’s mural shows her signature characters trying to heal the Earth with their tender love. She included the Amazon logo to represent consumerism, along with bandaged the trees. She recognizes the difficulties she faces in being Earth friendly – eating too many skittles/starbursts and painting with aerosols. But she’s trying. “I have my students, my daughter – I want them to have a good future.”
Last minute, Rari also received the opportunity to paint the wall next to her original assignment, and planned to paint an alebrije. She explained, “Some people interpret them as like these spirit guides… so I’m incorporating those into this as well.”
Mayan Heritage
Across the street, on the facades surrounding the community center, artists found a divergent focus for their talents. Inside the center’s grounds, Ecuadorian artist FABS worked alongside Dakpak and Rabia (both based in Mexico) to complete a massive group mural. “We’re doing an interpretation of a Mayan legend,” FABS said. Because there was foliage and a bird present in their work, I asked if they were addressing the climate change theme as well.“Here we’re kind of going more for identity for the kids,” FABS said. “The kids here are pretty conscious of that, about recycling, they’ve done a lot of things in that sort of area.”
As I walked to the community center’s outer facades, I found Kristy working on a mural depicting the mythology surrounding the Mayan goddess of painters and textile artists. Sensing a theme, I asked Kristy why she chose this subject matter for this particular spot. “We wanted to do something to honor the Mayan culture, because a lot of the young people today are ashamed of their ancestry, she replied. “They get discriminated against or they get teased if they speak the Mayan language. We wanted to do something to help young people see their culture in a way that they’re proud of it or they have more interest in it, trying to keep it alive.” She mentioned that the community center hosts Mayan language courses as a way “to keep the kids in touch with their roots and to help them learn more about their Mayan heritage.”
Danielle Mastrion also painted one of the center’s outer facades for her second year at the festival. When I asked Mastrion what had inspired her return to Akumal, she said, “I really enjoyed painting deep in the pueblo. I thought that was awesome.” Last year, she painted a sea turtle on a resident’s home. “I felt like that really was a way to connect with the local residents and see how they felt about the mural festival and see the stuff that they wanted on the wall,” she recalled. “My house owner was really happy with the fact that I did nature and sea turtles because that’s pretty much what Akumal is about, the conservancy that they do.”
This year, her contribution to the festival featured human figures. Mastrion’s work showed a composition of traditionally painted faces and skulls. She drew her inspiration from Day of the Dead. This year, she’d spent the holiday in Mexico City while visiting for her birthday. “I was researching where Day of the Dead came from and how its roots are also tied with the ancient indigenous cultures,” Mastrion said. “While I was doing that research, I kept finding these masks, they’re called ‘life and death’ masks…This is my interpretation of those ancient masks.”
I mentioned to Mastrion that I’d noticed this sub-theme surrounding the community center. In return, she shared, “I just think it’s important that they recognize the indigenous roots and that it’s not totally erased from their culture… think all of us think it’s really important to be proud of your roots and your heritage, so we wanted to honor the Mayan culture too.” The theme really resonated with me; although every person has distinct roots, we all participate in the greater conglomerate of human culture. It’s tragic to me when we lose things, like languages or libraries, that can never be replaced. I long for a world that respects these priceless relics by preserving them.
A Love For Creativity
The characteristic that makes human culture so special lies in its diversity. Ideas are expressed in completely unique manifestations that differ with each individual based on their background and perceptions. AAF’s celebration of creativity comprises the event’s greatest asset. Amongst the artists, there were many who used the festival as a venue to explore their own capabilities.
Street art duo NSCB Studio capitalized on the opportunity to explore new directions with their work. This was their second year at Akumal. Last year, the pair painted a mural of Mexican girl being led by her spirit guide animal under a blood moon on the facade of the pueblo’s police station. This year, they were interested in exploring different fields of vision within their mural, “kind of talking about inter-dimensionality,” one member said. They incorporated Mexican patterns, found in pottery and tapestries.
Seca_one, from the UK, also returned for his second year. For this year’s fest, he painted his girlfriend’s chihuahua, Pepito, who is actually a resident of the surrounding area. “He’s fifteen now, he’s on his last legs. He’s got Alzheimers, he’s deaf, he’s blind,” The artist said. “I thought it’d be fitting and everyone seems to like it. He wears his sombrero when he goes out on walks.” The artist doesn’t normally paint animals, this was a somewhat special occasion.
Kansas City-based artist Rif Raf Giraffe returned for his second year, and told me, “We liked it so much last year that we came back again because it’s gorgeous down here.” Regarding his style, he said, ”Most people would describe it as whimsical or something like that. Usually fun, usually really bright colorful stuff. It’s either characters or giraffes. A lot of patterns kind of built into stuff most of the time too.” The artist continued, “I just kinda never plan anything for stuff like this and just kind of bring a sketchbook. I looked at what I had and just started painting.” Anything bright or colorful definitely suits the place, I decided.
I could sympathize with Rif Raf’s mindset. Throughout AAF, I conducted my interviews in a desultory fashion, hoping to learn about the artists who participated in an organic fashion. The place invites an easygoing approach, and I felt that playing by its rules served me well. Whether it was my own approach to journalism or the artists’ relationship with their own work, I found AAF fertile land for experimentation. The predominant themes that arose from its atmosphere, each noble in their own right, testify to the efficacy of such an environment. In less sterile terms, it was magic.
