Visual Narratives among the Tapiete: mural art in an indigenous community of northern Argentina

Abstract

In this article I explore how a project to improve the dwellings of an indigenous community generated the painting of murals in which emerged heterogeneous visual representation of the ethnicity of this Tapiete community. Those paintings are grounded in the identity, memory and experience of these Tapietes living in an peripheric urban setting. Moreover, the painting of the houses and murals generated momentarily new inter-ethnic relations with the neighboring residents. The Tapiete murals reflect the complex identity of this community, the need to represent in the walls an imagined past and a differentiation from the surrounding population. Hence the murals incorporate past narratives. I consider these murals to be visual narratives based on personal and collective stories rooted in the people’s memory.