I wasn't lying when I told in my previous street art post you that I had found at least 100 new street art pieces!
The summer arrived in Mexico and with it, the small towns got flooded with new graffiti, both freelance pieces as well as commissioned art.
The town halls in Mexico know that having a colorful scenario at least in the downtown area attracts tourism through the word of mouth spread, so the more high quality street art one can find on any given street, gives the town a bigger Magic town vibe.
I mentioned in an early comp but I guess I'll add that again: The term Magic town was coined around a decade ago when the National Tourism entity was striving to attract tourism from within Mexico, aiming to encourage Mexicans from every corner of the country to spend a holiday inside the country, keeping the money influx inside the national territory and spreading the wealth to poorer states. At the beginning it worked like a charm, every Magic town had a lot to offer - culturally, historically, socially or intellectually - and ever Mexican knew that if a town had this badge, it was worth spending a weekend there getting to explore their corners and discover their secrets.
The problem was that after a few years, and after seeing how successful this idea was for the towns who got the title because they deserved it, more town halls decided they wanted in the bonanza, even if they had nothing to offer to the tourists. These towns either made a half-ass effort to make their town appear magical, or they simply bribed the central entity that gave out these titles and well, you can imagine how it affected the term magic town.
Nowadays, every little town with an old church or a small ancient hacienda has the title and it has depreciated and lost its meaning, hurting the tourism in the towns that really deserve the term.
Cholula is one of the towns that truly deserves this title, not only because of how much street art one can find, but because it is home to the biggest pyramid in the world - it's below the city though, so you can't really explore it, although there are some ancient Aztec ruins within the city - and also because it is home to the highest amount of churches per square kilometer. Pretty sick huh?
Anyway, Cholula is a synonym for street art, but I had already shared on Hive everything there was to share regarding this topic in this city, but as I said a few days ago, the summer arrived in Cholula and with it, a huge amount of new graffiti pieces, which means I have a lot to share with you once again!
This picture is not the best, I actually woke up very early on Saturday to be able to take these photos because if you arrive in Cholula after 9am, you will find rivers of people and countless cars roaming around the streets and you won't be able to take any good quality pictures without anyone meddling in your frame. So I had to trade good light and having the sun against me in exchange of having clean pictures without people around.
The light for this pic is not the best, but I still wanted it to be the thumbnail of this post because of the color and the message: It looks like a post apocalyptic dessert where there are no humans anymore, or maybe an alien planet, and the vegetation as well as the terrain look so strange and yet, very familiar to me. It reminds me of the planet Helliconia from the book series by Brian Aldiss or perhaps the planet where Riddick gets abandoned in the third movie called Riddick, part of the movie series The chronicles of Riddick which if you haven't seen, you are missing out big time if you like science fiction, especially the first movie called pitch black where Vin Diesel was skyrocketed to fame.
The best part about Cholula is that you can find street art everywhere, and everyone joins in the graffiti bonanza, even Floral studios commission a street artist to get something going on in the shop's walls in order to become more attractive and do their part in giving the town a magic vibe. Cholula is a bike town despite having so many cars around, so the parked bike by the window is a very nice detail.
This is not a new piece, in fact it's probably one of the oldest ones but given the fact that almost nobody gets to see it I guess the paint stuck and has remained intact. This one is inside one the many empty lots that you can find if you walk around the town. These lots will never be sold because the town is too expensive now and the owners are people who inherited the land and won't get rid of it unless they become millionaires overnight, so yeah these art pieces will remain there forever.
I have no idea what this is, but I guess it is some sort of furry monster with tentacles and a bee-like set of eyes, pretty bizarre but still beautiful, especially because of the surroundings that are very ad-hoc.
This one is next to the furry octopus above. It looks like a dragon with Mayan or Aztec details, but also with a sombrero to leave any question out regarding the Mexicanness of the piece. It has a rattlesnake's tail but it has wings and no feet, so it's most likely a weird version of a wyrm mixed with Mexican culture.
Mexico is a catholic country, and Cholula is loyal to its roots. As I mentioned above, Cholula is the town with more churches per square kilometer so, this piece of a woman praying holding a catholic rosary is a great depiction of the real Cholula, although the woman doesn't look anything like the average Cholulteca woman, which is usually short and brown skinned.
This one needs no words, I think the piece speaks for itself and unlike the picture above, this one depicts a more real Mexican modern woman. It's worth mentioning so you can appreciate how it is to find street art in Mexico, that the wall of the house this is painted on, still has some foundations on top, preparing for an eventual influx of money from the owner so they can grow their house into a second floor. This is very common in Mexico, you will find many houses like this, with the foundations protruding from the building, being ready to enlarge the house at the first opportunity which, if we are being honest and because of the economic situation in Mexico, most likely will never come.
Cholula is home to the biggest pyramid on earth, and it is a huge part of the local culture and heritage, something that the locals take pride on and love to depict on every chance they have. In here we can see a peasant working the fields with the pyramid behind him and the most famous church in town on top of the hidden pyramid.
It's worth noting how big this mural is if you take into account the door on the right and the couple of benches on each side of the door. The thing I liked the most was the green heart at the right, which I can link to the heart of the peasant being linked to mother nature and the resources she provides as long as we take care of her. A Green heart means a person in touch with their natural side.
This Iguana is made of cobblestone, and the colors and craft of making this piece like this should be enough, but if one takes a closer look they will see how between the tail and the body you can see what looks like an old European city harbor and, on top of the Iguana you can see a big city behind. Pretty cool detailing if you ask me. This one was also contending to be the thumbnail but given the lack of color diversity I decided to leave it as just part of the compilation.
This one is simple and yet, when I saw it walking down the street with my coffee in hand I thought to myself wow, that is so cool. You might think this is just a minecraft baddie or something like but in reality it is a Jaguar face from the Aztec culture. I also found cool as hell that someone decided to paint this one in the outer wall of their house as if living inside an Aztec head was a normal thing to do. The detail of adding some cactus outside to match the wall's color is also nice, don't you think?
A badger and a weasel. I didn't even know they were friends, I always thought the honey badger was some sort of lonely bastard but I guess I was wrong, or maybe I am thinking of the wolverine and badgers are friendly. This one is just beautiful, it has no deeper meaning or Mexican roots all over the piece and yet, it is amazing as it is. There's some sort of snake in red on the left, hidden at plain sight by the way, in case you haven't seen it.
Take a look at how big this piece is... just take into account the double door and car pathway. This is a huge mural.
This one was the runner up photo contending for the thumbnail honor, but given how long horizontally it is, I decided to leave it out and give way to a more square pic to be the thumbnail, exploiting the colors and space in the frame it uses.
Regardless of this, this piece is simply gorgeous - and big ass hell, look at the light post at the left ad then check out the sign on the right. These street name signs are around 70cmx50cm, so now you can imagine how this piece looks in real life.
The man is using an Eagle Lord (Caballero Aguila) which is the highest tier a human can reach and means that the person has conquered the highest point in human nature: a peak level of consciousness and spirituality.
I mean look at this, if wall murals was not enough, even cargo trucks have graffiti all around, how cool is that?
But enough of descriptions, one thing I love about putting these comps out is when people actually look at them and interpret the ones they like the most. If I meddle in the process, I leave you - the reader - no space for interpretation and unbiased admiration.
So give it a try, check out these pieces below and give me your oppinion!
I hope you liked this compilation, it was a rather short one compared to my other comps but I realized that the bigger I make this comps, the less attention the pieces in particular will get, so I have decided to leave these comps at 30 photos per post.
If you enjoyed this street art compilation, then you are in for a wild ride, because I have 16 more from all around the world, you can check them out here:
