Identidad colectiva a partir del arte urbano en Medellín, Colombia

Abstract

This article collects the partial results of an investigation that proposes to understand therelationship between social groups in the territories and the manifestation of urban artas agents of identity construction, in Medellin, Colombia. The methodology implemented wasqualitative, phenomenological, whose scope was descriptive. A content analysis was carried outbased on the manifestations of urban art identified and their relationship with the constructionof identity based on aesthetic coexistence. Semi-structured interviews were conducted withmembers of various urban art collectives in the center, west and south of the city, traced fromvisual ethnography. These territories comprise Comuna 13, the Ayacucho Tramway Corridor andthe central and southern zones as an aesthetic unit. Based on this, a historical reconstructionof urban art in Medellín was proposed and the comparative analysis of two types of artisticintervention in the city: the one that arise from local and independent social organizations andthe one that is implemented from the institutional framework. As a result, it was found that theurban art of the city has its origins in the independent sociocultural dynamics, which wouldlater be institutionalized, dynamizing historical, social, aesthetic and economic transformationin the intervened environments. Collective identities arise from this process, which are derivedfrom inhabiting the aesthetic, urban and public space, either as an inhabitant and/or as theprotagonist of artistic intervention.