ASARO/OAXACA

Tania David
November 2016

ASARO/OAXACA 2006
El Arte del Conflicto
Portable Murals

A recent exhibition at Bellas Artes, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Asamblea de Artistas Revolucionarios de Oaxaca
(The Assembly of Revolutionary Artists of Oaxaca)

ASARO began with the political turmoil in Oaxaca….most of us who supported the popular movement as artists were young people…. We decided that ASARO could play an important social role in which art and different kinds of artist’s expression could support the social movement.

– Mario/ASARO

Creative ability is a resource upon which the people of Oaxaca have historically drawn to survive and revitalize  The assembly of revolutionary artists arises from the need to reject and transcend authoritarian forms of governance and institutional culture and societal structures which have been characterized as discriminatory and dehumanizing for seeking to impose a single version of reality and morality or simulacrum.

We resumed the form of the assembly because we believe in the possibility of recovery of force in the art community and because the assembly is the way we dialogue and make decisions based on the collective interests.  

  – from ASARO’s 2006 manifesto

Our mission is to take our artistic expression to the streets, to popular spaces, to raise consciousness about the social reality of the modern form of oppression that our people face.

– from 2006 manifesto

In the historic center of Oaxaca, paint is not allowed because it is part of the historical patrimony and there are many restrictions, but sometimes people also support us. In more remote parts of the city, we do have support.  That’s where we want to leave information because it’s where people are most marginalized.  They don’t have the same resources that those who live in the historic center have.  It’s that pueblo, the one living here and now, who gives us means for creating consciousness.

– Chapo/ASARO

 

We believe that artistic expression needs to be a form of communication that allows dialogue with all sectors of society and enables the display of real existing conditions, rules, and contradictions of the society we inhabit.

– from 2006 manifesto

ASARO is in favor of inclusion and the fight to create new rules of social participation and of a profound change in consciousness of the Oaxacan.  We are a counterculture movement of artistic creation.

ASARO seeks to create awareness and generate ideas to help build a new contemporary ideological current, which has at its center humanist values that break the mold set by the system and create a society free of alienation as well as a revolutionary art – that transforms, while advocating for change and innovation.

 – from 2006 manifesto

We promote workshops for the communities.  The idea is to unite more people to ASARO, to multiply in small scale including people from different regions to create centers of resistance, and to create workshops in which the youth can visualize their reality in these regions.  

– Mario/ASARO

When we say pueblo. we’re talking about the farm worker, the wage worker, the housekeeper, the student, etc.  We are driven by them, to lift their morale, inspire them to keep fighting. We make graphic art for the people that are fighting. For those people who are asleep, we want to give them purpose—a desire to struggle and to take off their chains of exploitation.

 – Mario/ASARO

Initially our purpose was denouncing through graphic art what was happening in the city, but also it was the power of translating a creative and comprehensible language into actions for a society living in conflict.

 – Chapo/ASARO

The people here are represented as a little savage.  Mass media does not reveal the truth; it’s always disguised. They show the colors of our pueblos, like they do in celebrations of the communities.  It’s a way for the state to make money, though, and it’s a form of exploiting that image of our state and these communities in other states.

 – Ita/ASARO

 

It’s possible to change this world. You just have to wake up. – ASARO tag

Quotes from Getting Up for the People: The Visual Revolution of ASAR-Oaxaca
by Asaro, Mike Graham De La Rosa, Suzanne M. Schadl

We are the Face of Oaxaca: Testimony and Social Movements
by Lynn Stephen

Facebook link for ASARO/Espacio Zapata