The use of graffiti and its practical purpose

---

People began looking for ways to prevent their houses falling down in earthquakes, so they began to recycle plastic bottles and wrap their houses up in plastic so that instead of the house falling down, it would sway from side to side. To stop the material deteriorating over time, they found that by painting the plastic it would preserve it. This became the start of graffiti and due to a law having being passed which stated that once a house had been graffitied, it then marked the territory of an artist and nobody else could paint over the original graffiti. The inhabitants soon cottoned on to the fact that it would be better to pay a decent artist to pain their house rather than waiting fo it to be covered with less creative and more ugly graffii such as Í love Barbara’ Instead people would commision famous artists such as De Lucas and Renso Pequenino (famous for animal paintings)to paint. This worked well for the artists too as this paved their way to fame and the home owner would end up with a picture which would represent the culture. In the town you see art of Mapuche dolls, one of the original tribes here, lots of fish art, there is one in particular which shows the poverty of the people, the fish has wounds on his arms and legs and the belt around his waist is being squeeze to symbolize he was struggling for money. There was also Paseo Beethoven a staircase painted black and white to represent a piano. As the tradition of graffiti carried on and more houses were built the whole town became rows of different coloured houses with random shapes. The view of this is fascinating, I’ve never seen such beautiful chaos.

---