Graffmapping: A story that is told on the walls

Richar Santana has dazzled with his work half the world after the Graffmapping firm, the artistic concept in which the plastic of the graffiti links with the visual impact of videomapping. His works have taken him for places as disparate as South Korea, the Philippines or the United States. But there is an invisible thread that keeps it sewn the identity of the island and, particularly, to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

One of the last unanimous applause he has received has to do with the latest edition of the Canary Islands Rally, WRC test, which had its symbolic departure in Santa Ana’s square. His was the artistic proposal that illuminated the cathedral in one of the most iconic images in the history of sport on the island.

But behind this artist, formed in graphic design in Granada, there is a narrative vocation that is printed and accredited in many spaces of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. «when I do a mural like to investigate a lot, I stop on ancient issues in that specific area. How that neighborhood was like in the past and that is why I look for many photos that tell me what it was like before, in which you can find those graphic resources to take them to the street because many times those photos are hidden, go to know where, and it is a way to make them in view of everyone and through them to tell stories, which is what I like, ”he says.

Graffmapping landed physically a month ago in 38 of Perojo Street, after the windows of an old erotic store. In that route, protected patrimonially, Santana has installed its base of operations making it a free access gallery for the public. Without going any further, this Friday, May 2, between 8:00 p.m. and 23.00, the public can enjoy free access of its last project with the screening of videomapping on reproduction in a mural within the premises of an old photograph of Triana Street in 1966.

«When I settled here I wanted to do something with some photo of the Street Perojo, but I did not find any suitable so they recommended that because I did not look on Triana and Jaime Medina, of Insula Signa, he told me that I had many. I went home to see them and this fascinated me, ”says Santana on the foot of the project.

It is not the first time that Graffmapping and Insula Signa share ideas and execute hand works. The installation that Santana launched in its day is very remembered to illuminate the abandoned sign of the Galaxy’s Multicines one night before Insula Signa, custodians of the heritage of graphic design on the islands, rescued it to leave it to a good collection.

From that idea now a commemorative shirt is born that can be acquired on the Graffmapping website, sealed with the date of that intervention that had so much impact among the nostalgics of the city.

These pieces are signs that innovation is not at odds with identity. Santana explores all the possibilities offered by the tools with which he works but knows what is necessary to walk back to document that proud belonging that has not always been a constant in this environment.

His most physical work can be found throughout the islands. Essential reference is that wall of El Puertillo, on the North, in which Manuel Sosa’s face shines, ‘Sandokán’, historical rescuer in the productive island coasts.

And in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria there are two examples that perfectly tell the basis of their work, the two marked on the facade of two institutes full of stories in the city: the mythical ‘lettuce’ of the Vega de San José and the one of Cruz de Piedra, the first telling the marine tradition and the relationship of the Latin candle with the neighborhood; The other with that famous photography of children playing on the land of the missing Soccer Field of Antonio Rojas, a plot in which the center was then built.

That period at the foot of the neighborhood, in which the sketch on the chosen wall begins to be discovered, is part of the creative process and molds the original idea. «I have a lot of people’s stories when I am already thrown by doing the mural. There are many people around and stops and counts their memories related to the time of the photos I am drawing. For example, in San Cristóbal I put the name of the royal boats and people were reflected and had anecdotes. We also did one of Jesus Arencibia in Tamaraceite, painting a battery of water and many people came to remind us of their stories, ”he says.

And, of course, nostalgia is an elementary piece that has more to do with what is suddenly with that artistically intervened wall than almost the one who creates it. «In San Cristóbal also happened to us that a girl arrived and told us: that is me, the one that is there on the back, in one of the Latin candle boats. Or people who suddenly feel very excited because he discovered that we were doing the father, ”he says.

Creative vocation

Richar Santana explains that his creative vocation pierced him during adolescence. Born in 1987, since young people he has been involved in creative processes that definitely exploited after passing through the university in key years for his personal perspective.

That has allowed him, from one of his first works in Fuerteventura, to expand the spaces where his work is known and achieve an international significance that, breaking taboos, also seems to have acquired in his local projects.

In that last approach the opening of the gallery seems framed in the street, emblematic space in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. This Friday’s appointment with the lighting of the old commercial labels vertically on Triana Street will also be repeated on Friday of next week, with the aspiration of this visual narrator of turning his gallery into a referential place in the cultural life of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.