1 February 2014
Today we slide down Salvador’s streets, to meet a siren, a re-composed creature made of material given a second life. Her inaugural swim will be an offering ahead of the feast of Iemanjà, orixa of the sea froth, queen of the sea, always eager to anoint herself with lavender, awaiting tomorrow’s grand celebrations.
The paper maché fish woman is a daughter (and mother) of the MUSAS, the open air gallery of street art, of the CEN and the inhabitants of the community of Solar do Unhao, who will deliver her to the waves, escorted by flowers, compostable offerings, gifts that the sea can digest.
The community overflows: the celebratory snake descends, embracing the siren, the procession serenaded by the Afoxè Filhas de Gandhi, winds down among the curving houses, just under Contorno street, opening to the bay, dangling its feet in the sea. It is a via coloris punctuated by graffiti, a workshop of brushes, buckets for painters and paint-dabbed hands.
The MUSAS tribe, together with the residents of the community, is realizing a master plan: to transform the Solar do Unhao in one of the most colorful places in the world, bestowing a new identity to the walls through a baptism of paint. The ablution of colors will begin along the streets, inside (so whoever walks every day can get an eyeful of that palette and carry it, wandering around the rest of the city), and then continue with the outer walls, the public side of the community. It’s a tiny revolution armed with paintbrushes that transfigures not only the facades: it mutates the destiny of the place, fighting the urban inequalities and re-qualifying beauty simply by highlighting it.
The enterprise is supported by volunteers from the “Que ladeira è essa” in the ladeira da Preguiça (a twin space in the heart of the city) and is open to include anyone who wants to contribute with paint or manpower, every Saturday morning.
The trail of today’s adulators has dissolved on the little beach that is an appendage to the community, to reassemble with the paints or at Dona Suzana’s, the consoling restaurant of the Solar.
The siren has found a place on a rock, arms open to the fishermen and their sea, waiting to light up, reflecting the dreamy colors coming to life just above.
Loona
MUSAS (Museu da Street Art de Salvador) www.ilovemusas.com
CEN (Coletivo de Entidades Negras) http://www.cenbrasil.blogspot.com.br/
