The story behind “El Fisu”, the mysterious doll hidden in the corners of CABA

art generates discomfort and that is why Martín did not want to escape this characteristic, much less for his work to go unnoticed. If you have ever walked through the streets of the City, it is likely that you have come across the sculpture of a man sleeping in a strange position against the wall.

Martín grew up between the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Floresta and the Buenos Aires town of Castelar, west of the suburbs. His constant comings and goings on the bus made him witness various scenarios during the time the trip took. He always liked to draw and had ease, but he never thought that this would be the starting point for him to face a new project that would change his life.

Also read: Who would you call if today were your last day of life?: who is the tiktoker that is all the rage with his viral question

One day the artist was left with nothing: He separated from his partner, could not renew the rental contract and his business failed. Jumping from one brother’s house to another, one day an invitation opened the door to a new opportunity and “The Fisu”his greatest work, It came to life reflecting -a little- that moment of deep fall.

In the art of discomfort

“I was born in Merlo, my old man’s family was from Castelar, so I grew up a little in Floresta, my home, and a little in the west. I come from a very large family, we are 11 siblings and my grandmother took care of us. During these trips to Castelar I gradually moved away from drawing, I began to hang out with the neighborhood kids and the idea of ​​starting a band arose, for a social issue. I began to dedicate myself to music even though at the same time I went to a school where I had a lot of ties with the arts,” Martín explained to TN.

But after that things began to falter. “I had a band for a long time until 2013 when I decided to leave it. I separated from the couple I was with, they did not renew my rental contract, I worked independently, I had a small sublimation and printing company, and I collapsed. Suddenly everything I had built up until that moment collapsed“I ended up being The Fisu who later believes,” the artist recalled about his beginnings.

Thus, one day a friend showed up with a free mural workshop that was taking place in Caseros. “I started there and never stopped again,” she said. “I had a lot of time on my hands, so I started assisting the professor in his work and events. He got walls and invited his students to intervene in them, and that’s how I got fully into painting and specifically mural painting, I had this background from high school, I had been painting and drawing above all and I began to return to this activity, especially that of the living model that accompanied me practically always.”

The birth of the Fisu

One day a unique opportunity presented itself. A free wall awaited him. “The teacher told me ‘paint what you want’. That’s when I started to wonder what I was going to do. I always assisted him, but now he could do whatever he wanted and I remember that going on the bus I started to draw a guy who was sleeping on the bondi, who looked like he was on the street or like a totally exhausted worker. So on the way I drew it and when I arrived I painted this character. That’s where my career as an artist started. I realized that I could do whatever I wanted and I saw myself reflected in the painting in some way. She saw him and said: ‘it’s my painting’”he detailed.

Little by little, jobs related to art began to emerge and he dedicated more and more time to that. “This came naturally to me, it is where I put my attention and I simply respected that: exhausted, tired people, sleeping anywhere, using public roads to sleep, because on top of that that is when you are most vulnerable and even more so if you do it on the street.” ”, he highlighted.

Although his work was not focused from a political perspective, over the years he realized that deep down this feeling of social empathy was hidden. The large-scale mural was not going to go unnoticed by those who pass by. “A bit you expose people to see it, You can paint anything on the street, but in some way you are putting that image in the daily life of certain people and exposing it to everyone who passes by. Furthermore, it is very different from how art is conceived where you generally have to go see it somewhere, it is not that you come across it,” she remarked and added: “You bring the work so that anyone can see it, even if they don’t want to see it”.

That’s when he started to wonder some things. “What does one do with that discomfort of seeing someone sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk? You see him and you even avoid him, you don’t even realize if he’s breathing, but you still walk by, you try to pretend to be the other one. So what he did was reinforce that discomfort. You don’t want to see it, but I’m going to put a giant mural 7 meters high on you So you can see, I was interested in that moment in which one decides not to take charge in some way, not to empathize,” he explained about his first murals.

The sculptures of El Fisu, the dolls hidden in the City. (Photo: Instagram @el.keni)

And so he played a little with perspectives. Although she painted people sleeping on the streets, exhausted workers, or someone who simply lay down on a bench and fell asleep, she did not do so in a conventional way. That is, not in the position in which a person generally sleeps, but rather he placed them vertically, generating a certain tension and lack of support in whom he was drawn. “It was making that image more uncomfortable”, the sculptor remarked.

But since his plan was not to stay still, he chose to go further. “It occurred to me to do something more pop, more popular, give it a twist. I made some murals that seemed horrible to me until one day I made a sculpture workshop and I started with this character, ‘The Fisu’”, he recalled. “When I realized that I could make copies, that I could stick them on the wall, that in turn the support was the one I had been using, the street, I said: ‘It’s the fissures, it’s pop, it’s sculpture, it’s a relief and it works.’” In this way, in the middle of the pandemic, he began to give life to this character.

“Was novel because You didn’t see that type of intervention on the street. There are stickers, murals, stencils. There are things with venices, but nothing with relief on the walls in the streets. It was also a bit of a counterpoint to what he had been doing with the murals where he used larger dimensions and this sculpture is 25 centimeters. The impact this time was not because of the size, but because of the relief and because you found it. You are looking around, attentive, because if you go your way it goes unnoticed, but if you find it it draws attention,” he assured.

The first of the Fisus came to life at the intersection of Córdoba and Scalabrini Ortiz. It immediately had an impact that I did not expect. Many people began to contact him telling him that his work had been found. So, over time, Different neighborhoods of the City of Buenos Aires came alive with El Fisu. “With the work of art you can allow yourself to think in a different way, in a more empathetic way,” remarks the artist who has already toured several cities distributing them and dreams of taking his Fisus throughout the country: ““I want it to be something representative of here, of Argentina.”

“For me the Fisus are teachers, because they make me know the world through it. Traveling through the provinces through this is a lot. All the people who share their experience with me and make me understand people a little more, the place where I live, so for me El Fisu is one of those teachers and I think I am also a little bit El Fisu because I started painting at the most fisu moment of my life, where I had nowhere to fall dead,” he highlighted.

That is why he points out that although before he did it without any intention, today he feels it as a responsibility. In addition to this, his Fisus is also requested by everyone who wants to have one in his house. “The fact that I sell them doesn’t mean that I don’t go out and hit them on the street. In fact, they buy them from me because they see them on the street. One woman left him money, another lit him a candle to ask him for something. The kids love it and if they approve it, that’s it,” he explained.

Today Martín continues working as a mural creator and is increasingly involved in the world of art committed to social issues. Fisu is just a small sample of the reality that he seeks to make visible, bother and at the same time find meaning in his art.