Document Type
Article
First Faculty Advisor
Patricia Gomez
Second Faculty Advisor
Alex Perullo
Keywords
street art; murals; Latin America; Chile; Valparaíso
Publisher
Bryant University
Rights Management
CC 4.0 BY-NC-ND
Abstract
Street art is a way for people to express their emotions for the public to see. Sometimes it is used as a form of protest that gives a voice to the voiceless. The history of street art in Chile begins in the 1940s when it first appeared in the region. Since then, popularity of street art has grown particularly after the reestablishment of democracy in Chile during the 1990s. The city of Valparaíso, Chile is an international hub for street art. Many murals relate to the political, social, or economic environment in Chile. In this research, I discuss how even though many people view street art as vandalism, a part of urban landscapes, or an aesthetic form, it also exists as a means to communicate social, political, and economic problems, as well as generate emotional responses from the public at large. I do this by focusing on ten murals that appeared around Valparaíso in 2018.
