An explosion of art splashes color on the walls of the Besòs river park. The river that has ceased to be an open-air dump to become the paradigm of renaturalization and propulsive model of biodiversity is affiliated with BesArt, an innovative cultural project that in just under a year of existence has consolidated Santa Coloma de Gramenet as an international capital of urban art, elevated to the level of artistically cosmopolitan cities such as Berlin or Miami. “The Besòs River has been transformed, the only thing missing was the culture”, summed up the mayoress, Núria Parlon, on March 13, 2023.
Since the BesArt The river museum project was announced, promoted by the Mediterranean Street Art association and the Real Cercle Artístic de Barcelona, ??many of the best street art artists in the country have chosen to display their works on the walls of the fluvial park. A route, at the moment, of 900 meters that integrates 41 works by creators of the stature of Aryz (Octavi Serra Arrizabalaga), who was the one who started the process of creating the first work of BesArt, and soon add other artists of recognized prestige, such as Sixe Paredes, Mina Hamada, Franco Fasoli or Francesc Punsola.
The aspiration of the promoters of BesArt is to “maintain a living museum” that can be appreciated as the essence of urban art, as defined by David Hernández, president of Mediterranean Street Art and one of the founders, which can lead to a mixture that fusion “philanthropy with the cultural industry”.
The consolidation of the urban museum takes place through the generation of synergies with complementary activities, as happened with the World Peace Forum when the river museum created the Wall of Peace, where hundreds of people left their mark. In this aspect, a key piece is the Real Cercle Artístic de Barcelona, ??the historic Barcelona cultural institution with a history of 140 years in the artistic world. Its president, José Félix Bentz, describes it: “We have given urban artists the opportunity to exhibit at the Palau Pignatelli”, headquarters of the entity. This is the case of Aryz himself, “who had a spectacular reception” and was, he admits, “one of the most crowded events”. And it is that the Circle sets the museum one of the lines of regular collaborations, such as those it maintains with several visual arts festivals, to “merge classic art with current artists and contemporary art”, whereby thing assures: “El Cercle could not close the door to a project like BesArt”.
It would not be surprising if the artists who participate in the Besòs museum project end up one day exhibiting “at the Queen Sofia or Tate Modern in London”, as has already been done by the second artist who embodied his work on a wall in Fluvial Park, Sixe Paredes, as pointed out by Albert Agustí, executive director of the project, who also highlights BesArt as a point of convergence between established artists and novice painters who seek notoriety by presenting their projects to the organization. Ultimately, the Santa Coloma project consolidates its prestige in international forums, largely thanks to the peculiarity of combining collaborations with other social activities, such as teaching with the involvement of local groups, for example schoolchildren, to whom the neglected urban art is introduced.
The artists themselves recognize that it is rewarding to paint on the walls of BesArt because of the interaction that is generated with the public, which they have never had before. The organizers exemplify this with an anecdote from Francesc Punsola, recently famous for revealing the authorship of a petroglyph that appeared to be Neolithic. They explain that “he got stuck on the title of his work” until a cyclist passed him and shouted “Vanishing point, artist, vanishing point!”, so he ended up calling it Punk de fuga, a work he defines as “countercultural, which opens a dimensional portal to those excluded from society, an opening with fuga”.
But a project of such magnitude needs collaborators and patrons, philanthropists who help to consolidate the evolution of urban artists with a new creative and participatory model that turns it into an international cultural benchmark. A space that presents another unusual aspect: since its creation it has not been vandalized. “Not even a pen drawing”, they say.
