3.22.2006

Start seeing las indígenas!

I love street art when it transcends the ego of its maker to become an incisive intervention in everyday life, when it uses the specificity of the medium to make visible what often isn't. A series eight street stencils by Lima's colectivo entre la espada y la pared the does that by inserting images of indigenous women--often invisible to wealthier, urban populations--into the "the swank white" neighborhoods of Miraflores and San Isidro.

Perhaps the work has more resonance after reading a 1993 speech by Anishinaabeg activist Winona LaDuke last night. She reported that 72% of the world's wars involve indigenous people; that all atomic weapons tests in the US have occurred on the lands of indigenous people; that 50 million indigenous people live in endangered rainforests; that a million indigenous people in the '90s were slated to be relocated due to dam-building projects.

1 comment:

klingatron said...

i seen that stuff on wooster, well good