Where to Find the Best Street Art in Chacarita, Buenos Aires

Located to the west of the trendy Palermo Hollywood and Soho neighbourhoods, Chacarita is on the up and up. Every week a cute new cafe or hip new bar opens, joined by some of the best eats and nights out in the city. Chacarita also has some of the city’s best street art. A lot of the most well known urban artists from Buenos Aires grew up in the Colegiales, Chacarita and Palermo neighbourhoods, so this was their stomping ground from early on in their careers. Residents of these neighbourhoods are used to seeing people painting, so there is a huge tolerance, acceptance and celebration of the art form in this area of the city. If you head to the area around the beautiful Chacarita cemetery, you can see some local graffiti, but it is in and around the bus terminal located at the corner of Castillo and Fitz Roy streets where some of the city’s most amazing street art can be seen. Permission to paint on the walls of this bus terminal was obtained by one of Argentina’s most well known street artists, Jaz, who grew up in this neighbourhood. Since then, it has become one of the most popular places to paint in the city, and new artworks crop up all the time. Over the years there have been works by Jaz, Ever, Axel Void, Evoca1, Hyuro, Pum Pum, Mart, Poeta, Nerf and Chu gracing the walls in this area, which has now grown to extend beyond the terminal itself. A huge wall of Homer Simpsons has been visible there for the past few years, the product of an all day painting session which saw all of Buenos Aires’ street artists gather together to paint their own particular version of Argentina’s favourite Simpsons character.

Another great spot for graffiti and street art is located close by in the neighbourhood of Colegiales. Head to Plaza Matienzo, the site of an international street art festival that was held in Buenos Aires in 2011, to see works by British artist Jim Vision and local legend Jaz, as well as lots of political murals and nu-skool graffiti. You will be able to see lots of graffiti on the power station on the other side of the square, and if you continue on for a few more blocks to the corner Alvarez Thomas and Avenida Dorrego, you will come across the Mercado de las Pulgas, or the Flea Market, where you can find many other murals that were also done as part of the 2011 festival. If you want to find our more about the history and culture of painting in the streets of Argentina, take a tour with graffitimundo, the first organisation to operate street art tours in the city of Buenos Aires.