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Paper short abstract

This paper discusses street art in Comuna 13 of Medellín, Colombia, as a collective process through which artists and residents have created a space of encounter to reimagine social relationships and reinforce the unity of a community fragmented by armed conflict.

Paper long abstract

In this paper, I examine street art in Comuna 13 of Medellín, Colombia, as a collective creative process through which artists and residents have forged a space of encounter to reimagine social relationships and reinforce the unity of a community fragmented by decades of armed conflict. Comuna 13 stands as one of the most emblematic sites of Colombia’s internal armed conflict and the subsequent peacebuilding efforts. After years of violence, by the mid-2010s, the comuna transformed into one of the city’s most visited and safest tourist destinations. This transformation is partly attributed to the street art that emerged in its public spaces. Building on this foundation, residents developed the Graffitour—a walking tour that narrates the comuna’s complex history to visitors through street art. Street art, laying the groundwork for the Graffitour, has facilitated spaces of encounter and dialogue among artists, residents, guides, and tourists, mediating the establishment and consolidation of social bonds. Moreover, the Graffitour has fostered the ethnographic encounter, enabling me to co-produce knowledge with participants through street art. In light of this, street art in Comuna 13 can be understood as a practice of relational art (Bourriaud 2002)—an art form that foregrounds human interactions and their social contexts, rather than asserting an autonomous and private symbolic space (Sansi and Strathern 2016).