Grandmas resignifying public space 1 Favorite 

Date: 

May 6 2014

Location: 

Cali, Colombia

This project consisted of an articulation between research, public policy and art. Corpovisionarios por Colombia was implementing a social change initiative in one of the poorest and most violents neighborhoods in Cali, Colombia. The demographic information showed that the most implicated population in the violence and murder cases were young men. They informed their masculinity through ideas of territory and its violent protection. Among other social problems, these young men had built several "symbolic boundaries", which consisted of territories owned and ruled by delincuential bands. No person, woman or child could cross boundaries without permission.
Given this context, Corpovisionarios did the following social experiment... What if these men would find through public spaces artistic representations of their moral models? Of their families, Childs, friends? Of their grandmothers?

With this idea on mind, this organization installed huge and colorful pictures of the neighborhood's grandmas. Suddenly, the most dangerous places of the hoods, showed smiling and cheerful faces of several grandmas. This inititiative had esplendid results: on one hand, these young men forbited to commit crimes or take drugs in these areas. Thanked to these pictures and the frequent visits they received, these places were apropriated by the community again and some "invisible boundaries" disappeared.

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