The Borda Hospital is a mental hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The murals were part of the effort to take better care of the mentally ill. People were attempting to de-institutionalize the mental hospital. The cultural center was built to improve the patients’ stays at the hospital. Patients are given the opportunity in the cultural center to express themselves through art and music. They put murals up and made radio broadcasting, baking, and herb growing available to the patients to help with the therapy. The art covers the walls and adds color to a usually dreary setting. Usually people think of hospitals and gray and sad. In April 2013, the Mayor ordered the police to control protestors who were fighting against the shutdown of part of the hospital. The incident became violent, and the police ended up injuring hospital workers. The irony is that usually people think of the mentally ill as violent and dangerous. This is why they get put in institutions. But the real violence comes from the outsiders like the police. My favorite mural is the one that says “It was always a center for the socially disappeared. Today we want it to be a space for active memory of art, culture and mental health. This saying is the main idea that the nurses, hospital workers, and supporters have been trying to attempt by adding the cultural center, the radio broadcasting, the garden, and the art all over the walls. They want to make a patient comfortable and happy in the space rather than feel like prisoners. The patients are there to get better and they need to be able to not feel cut off from the outside world completely. They are not supposed to be isolated from culture. I did took human development class, did and learned that art and music are very important ways to express oneself.
The Brigada Romona Parra, also known as BRP, is a Latin American artistic collective started by communists in the 1960s that painted political murals in Chile. The group was named after a young female protestor who was killed. Originally, their street art was used to brighten up the city. In 1969, they did a mural protesting the U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the war. Their artwork in the 1970s was also political and helped put Salvador Allende into power. They would use the colors of the Chilean flag for some of their paintings. When Pinochet took over as dictator and the group was banned, they continued to work underground. They would paint large R’s as a sign of resistance to the strict rule of Pinochet. They could no longer paint large murals because of the large number of police ruling the streets. After the dictatorship, the group focused on painting large, colorful murals about education reform and workers’ and indigenous peoples’ rights. These murals have colorful faces outlined with a thick black paint. Graffiti artists from Santiago used to go to Valparaiso to paint on the streets; however, the word spread and now people from all over to do graffiti there. There a now laws to limit graffiti on the streets of Valparaiso. You must ask permission to be able to write anything on a wall. This kind of goes against the point of graffiti. During the rule of Pinochet, street art like this would not be allowed so the current Valparaiso is definitely more open to the art form.
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