Monday, January 23, 2017

Mexico: Juárez: First Date: Murals

Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.


On my way back to the border crossing, I passed through a vast, largely empty plaza. It had the look of a place that had been razed and that was in the process - currently suspended - of being formed into a park.

On one side were what I presumed to be the remains of the old neighborhood, bedraggled but still standing, and on the other side, the back walls of businesses that fronted Avenida Benito Juárez. 

On those walls were loud, splashy, wowza murals. A feast. 

 
Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.


Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.

Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.

Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.

Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.


Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.


Within a parking lot and in another niche were other murals, grittier and darker. 

Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.




I wonder about that empty overall hung up on the barbed wire barrier in the mural above. Is that just a fateful place and position where an abandoned garment got thrown or blown? Or is it an intentional artistic statement of a struggle? Whether chance or deliberate, it speaks.




Mural in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 2016.


And with the above mural - an empty-eyed skull capped by an empty-eyed hull of a structure.

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