This piece is part of the project
Brigada de Dibujantes del Barrio Cuba (Drawing Brigade visiting the Cuba
Neighborhood), from Guayaquil, Ecuador. It’s located at the city’s
southern east edge, next to the Guayas river and it is a place full of
contrast. We wandered through alleys filled with wooden houses old and
new, dust streets, next to paved street and a big university with pools,
the local slaughter house with buses full of animals coming in and out,
bus stops where buses where cleaned, lonely and huge warehouses,
schools full of children playing, meat markets with very strong odors,
etc. We immediately connected with the people most of whom have lived
there all their lives, and love to tell stories of how ‘Barrio Cuba’ has
changed over the years.
The visits started in 2014, we did some
interventions in the streets, to activate the sharing of stories of the
neighborhood, to understand the context we were in. We also showed our
drawings in the meat market called “La gallera”. At the end of the
project we had another exhibit at a gallery that featured our art and
the release of the book titled “Born and Raised, attempts to enter the
Cuba Neighborhood” (2019), which chronicles the artists brigade.
This
project took place during a specific period of my life; where I was
experiencing some changes in my work of art. The drawings I did at the
beginning, show my interest in the physical space, perspectives and the
journey. At the end, as I became a feminist, I tried to shed some light
to women that lived in neighborhood.
