Earlier this week, while reporting on the collaborative mural ‘Where’s Wally’ in Sacramento, California, I noted how murals stand apart from other art forms due to their public nature, and the integral roles they play within their surrounding communities. With his latest mural in La Bañeza, Spain, titled “Waiting,” Serbian street artist Artez pays homage to a specific aspect of this characteristic: the impermanence of outdoor art.
In a statement for the mural, Artez writes that, “There are many things that can happen to a mural, many of which can lead to its disappearance. Its lifespan depends mostly on weather conditions, number of hours it is exposed to the sun and water, quality of surface and materials used. Also, many times human factor is responsible for the damage done to the painting, whether it was done by mistake or on purpose, or simply because of negligence.”
‘Fine art,’ often housed in museums and galleries, is generally safe from the forces of external change, but at what cost? Such work remains static, and its only hope for new life comes from our changing societal perceptions of it. Street art faces this too, along with the additional, beautiful, and tangible effects of wear and tear.
The particular location of “Waiting” spurred the artist’s contemplation on this concept. Artez notes, “This mural was painted on one of two walls that are facing a plot of land awaiting for a new residential premises to get built. While painting, I’ve been thinking about temporary nature of interventions in public space, something that I had to accept long time ago. My murals are only mine while I am painting them – once they are finished they belong to everyone and in that moment their ‘waiting’ journey toward the end begins!”
His thought processes are evident in the work he’s completed. Here, a girl sits on a wooden chair. Her stance does not convey relaxation, but rapt observation. Her hat is pulled back so as not to hinder her view, and she’s leaning forward. Artez surrounds her with a somewhat stark scene, devoid of his luscious foliage, save for one leafy plant. Instead, he sets the woman against a clear night sky, the moon perched above its horizon. The moon itself can be a symbol of change, always cycling through phases, refusing to remain static.
Artez jokes that “It took 5 days to finish this project and another 5 to recover from it!” His valiant efforts have proven successful, and this mural is a gorgeous, pensive, and poignant addition to the sixth annual “Art Aero Rap” festival that he completed it for. Its home, a town in Spain’s northern province of León, has a rich culture of celebration including carnivals and an annual motor bike race, one of the last remaining events of its type in the world. The organization’s website writes that “the festival was born with the intention of recovering, for this municipality, a lost cultural scene.”
The website continues to explain that “The lack of an own contemporary artistic panorama is revealed as a necessity for the organization; that with the premise of generating community spaces for creation, through which to encourage the participation of different local groups.” In this mission, we see that street art not only faces change, it has the power to spark it.
