1ra Expo de Arte Villero

Numerous artists participate in this first exhibition which shows the reality where the most marginalized sectors of the capitals population struggle every day. Villa 20 and 21, Barrio Piedrabuenba, Villa Zavaleta and Soldata, Villa 31 and 31b and Barracas is represented. Paintings, wall installations, photography, sculptures, Cumbia music and film.


The exhibition has a clear message to the world: "No al Paco", "No a la Base", or "No to crack", "No to freebase". The poor mans drug. Cocaine manufacturings leftovers. Crap. Shit. Overflowing the poor neighbourhoods of every Latin American city. Paco, crack or base, freebase being the venom which destroys families and homes in these humble parts of the city. A great part of the dwellers in the villas has to front this every day, simply because here is where paco is traded. And abused. This picture was painted explicitly to be photographed and published by the public to broadcast the message.
La Virgen next to a wall of clips from the paper: football, murder, poverty, drug abuse...documents of harsh living..






Creativity in the poorest villas or barrios in Buenos Aires is expressed through a will to transform struggle and ugliness to beauty.





Peron, Evita, football heroes and the Cumbia stars Gilda and Rodrigo. All of them have some way or the other become (sub)cultural saints after their death.
Gilda and Rodrigo, both of whom died young in tragic car accidents, are now worshipped like angels or popular saints. Their fan clubs meet at their graves, eat, drink and sing. At the same time they are Catholics, and their worship builds on Catholisism.
This is a stigmatized practice and a pronounced lower class fenomenon. Those who involve themselves are poor and from the working class. At the same time the local music genre Cumbia is in itself stimatized and considered lower class, while the middle class listen to European and American music. Here you have the class perspective on the one hand and faith contra rationalism on the other. The word "fan" is also stigmatized, and ethymologically dericed from "fanatic", says Hanna Skartveit, social anthropologist who studied the phenomeneon. The worship is about identity and pride among the working class. And it is about death and how you relate to it. Poor people handle death and burial on their own, while the rich make bureaus take care of this, considered cold and impersonal by the poor.
The fan clubs meet at the graves, particularly at weekends, and they decorate the graves with balloons and flowers, offerings of cigarettes and they bring crusifixes and pictures of Virgin Mary. The idea is that the dead artists are some kind of guardian angels close to God who will bring him their prayers. As a fan you carry an image of your guardian angel everywhere and at any time, talk to him or her and ask for advice. If the weather is bad, this may be a sign that the saint is angry.
This is far from madness, although different. Relating to saints is common in Catholisism. And they talk not only to Gilda or Rodrigo, but also to canonized saints such as Virgin Mary. Many are very concious that this is distinct from canonized Catholisism, but they feel they have a mission; to protect the name of the artist and to portect the family and its honour.
In Villa 21 a woman had made this Virgen sculpture and donated it to the exhibition.










Trains, trains and more trains. Estación de Contitución, or perhaps Retiro. Busy and chaotic.
The desire to live a decent life is as strong among the marginalized part of the population as among the rest of us. Art represents a way to break through and create beauty from horror.