There’s been a surge in street art in Tarapoto and San Martin recently, thanks largely to the Festival Equilibrio that took place in August 2013.
A good place to go see some fine examples is along “El Bulevar” (“The Boulevard,” or Alameda de la Paz), a street that snakes along the edge of town looking down over La Banda de Shilcayo. Here you can find work by Evoca1, a street artist now based in Miami but born in the Dominican Republic, and Peruvian artist Jonatan Rivera (JADE).
Art Along the Boulevard
The focal point along the street is Evoca1’s jaguar/man with bird combination, two towering figures that reveal more detail the closer you get. Evoca1 is a self taught artist with no formal art training.
Other works along El Bulevar include the Evoca1-JADE collaboration above…
… and this impactful solo piece by Peruvian artist JADE.
I haven’t been able to put a name to the work above, but it looks very similar to some pieces of street art I saw in Miraflores, Lima, done by DCT (that’s what the tag in Lima says, anyway). You can see one of these Lima pieces in my article about Lima’s fictional museum of contemporary art.
Even the drain covers are pretty sweet along the boulevard, not that you need any more reasons to stroll along this particularly artistic street. There are more works dotted around Tarapoto, as well as in Lamas and Moyobamba. If you know of any prime examples, feel free to leave the street name and number below so that I and anyone else can take a look (you could also take a photo and put it on the TarapotoLife Facebook page).
Street art in Peru generally is pretty disgusting, with little or no artistic merit and is more times than not a deplorable eyesore There are notable exceptionds, though, and the art in your article fits into that category. I hope that most of the street art in Tarapoto is equally nice. I doubt it though. What is your opinion,Tony, since you actually live there?
I use “street art” rather than graffiti in the article above, as to me graffiti is not necessarily art — although I’m not entirely sure how artists such as Evoca1 and JADE would define their work.
A lot of basic graffiti — in Peru and elsewhere — is just territorial tagging that can easily fit into the vandalism category. And, as you said, most of it has very little artistic merit.
There are a lot of ugly spray can tags scrawled around Tarapoto (including the ever-present “Zona Grone” Alianza Lima tag), but not as bad as in Lima. But 90 percent of all walls in Tarapoto remain unpainted, so graffiti easily accumulates over time. So for me it’s great to see real street art in Tarapoto — it’s better than plain, crumbling red brick walls and certainly better than tags and Zona Grone football scrawls.
Great! Thanks Tony!