The Sullana longest wall paint was made so

 

 

Photographs provided by Dandy Ruíz Estrada, distributed by FACTORTIERRA.

 

MARCAVELICA, Peru – Perhaps the most difference between an artist and somebody who’s not in it lays over his skill to see the beauty, or the possibility to make it up, right there where we see something usual or insignificant. That was why Dandy Ruíz Estrada, a.k.a. El Dandy, made as much as possible for the wall of a school turned a canvas of a collective creation.

 

“We’re losing the identity,” stresses the 40-year-old visual artist, Mallaritos-native, a town forming now one urban zone with Marcavelica, both part of Sullana Metro Area, the largest of Chira Valley.

 

At Andrés avelino Cáceres School, also known as Mallaritos, El Dandy and students of the three first high-school grades took over than 120 feet of wall –almost the front yard of 4 average houses in Sullana—and they started to represent frames of the local identity and ecology, as well as the history of Sullana and Peru. The work lasted 4 months to make up.

 

“We have to care the cultural identity because it allows us to know our ancestors, we can promote tourism, we can understand who we are,” he states.

 

A record for Sullana

As much as we know, this is about the longest wall paint across Sullana Province. Maybe, it’s not the highest (it’s only 6’2 feet from the floor up), but it has got condensing pretty beautiful what it proposed when it was pitched to the school’s principal Greta Calderón Castillo – “to be an artistic and ecologic space.”

 

“It briefs our animals, our plants, our typical gastronomy, our habits,” Dandy Ruíz explains. “It should be taken as an example for other schools.”

 

A piece of a route

The wall Paint, that was premiered on November 25^th, 2022, is located in one of the grounds of Andrés Avelino Cáceres School (founded 1987), and if you are interested in seeing it, it’s necessary to arrange a pass with the school’s principal office. However, putting it in perspective of a potential touristic route, it should be considered as an interesting spot.

 

First of all, the school is beside the Sullana-Talara Section of the Pan-American Highway, just amid Marcavelica and Monterón, where is the detour to Tangarará, the first Spanish foundation in South America.

 

Let’s add that Marcavelica as well as Mallaritos are remarkable towns because of two highlights: typical-food restaurants with recreational lots, and the stands where you can drink a cold pipa full of coconut water.

 

Mallaritos is 4 miles from Sullana Downtown, the trip takes 10 minutes in usual conditions. You also can take the collective cars going out Grau Square, beginning José de Lama Avenue, Sullana 20001, and asking the driver to leave you in the school’s entrance. At the moment of posting this story, the passage costs 3 soles or U.S. 75 cents.

 

It goes to the public

el Dandy has other projects of artistic and cultural development for Mallaritos, where he grew up, and by extension to the rest of Chira Valley. In fact, there is another wall paint to be premiered on December 7^th at Hildebrando castro Pozo School in Chalacalá Baja, Sullana District. The visual artists is also related to its promotion and making up.

 

Ruíz is graduate from Piura-based Ignacio Merino Fine Arts School, he’s one of the few developing in parallel the plastic arts in traditional platforms as well as through new technologies, especially the video-art, and his resumé includes a participation in a collective exposition at Salerno, in Italy’s Campania, during November 2021.

 

About the Mallaritos wall paint, what the artists has pretty clear is the work goes for the public. Knowledgests who already have appreciated it have one only adjective to describe it: “beautiful.”

 

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