Rendered dreams

I love the way in which street art democratises creative expression. Sometimes. Not always. But often enough to help create some change. Of course, the evolution of murals in public spaces sits alongside the criminalisation of graffiti and its intersection with racist and classist policing. Sits alongside the politics of representation and transformation in street art movements that say go faster, do better, see me. That challenge the slow turn away from histories of privilege – of racism, sexism, classism and the ongoing impacts of colonisation, dispossession and displacement – in the public art institutions that scatter around the world. Consciously, politically, decolonises the public spaces of empire. Asserts the Indigenous peoples who were here before the Spaniards. Creates new places of belonging from the dispossession of slavery and empire. Here, as you wander the streets in Bogotá, you don’t need to feel like you “belong in a gallery” to lift your eyes and see this meteor of hope being brandished into the sky. To see the dreams in the eyes of the young girl rendered bigger than life on a wall of a building. I’m pretty sure this is Bastardilla’s work. She’s one of the few female street artists in Bogotá. And, in a week when Van Gough and his gallery of sunflowers have made it into the news, here’s the next generation, the everything is always a remix, riffing off Starry Night (perhaps, that’s what I see in the lines). Saying to the girls who pass by – you’re here, see yourself, dream yourself, be bigger than a life that will try to make you small.