Based on the sheer volume and size of the murals he paints I’m sure lots of people out there know the identity of this anonymous street artist. At the time of writing this article however, we still have no idea who this prolific painter is. As I was traveling around South America there were a few artist’s work I would see over and over again, unlike other painters who might just paint in the city they live in, pieces by Stinkfish can be seen in just about every large urban area of SudAmerica. Originally from Mexico, he moved to Bogota at a young age with his parents and eventually became interested in making street art, first by painting stencils around 2000 and then a few years later starting to work on larger, more complex pieces. Today his style is very recognizable and he has huge murals not just in the city where he continues to live and work but everywhere from Rio to Santiago to Buenos Aires to Lima. Though he paints a lot of different themes, his most common works are based on pictures of people he has actually seen or met. First he takes these pictures and then paints their likeness adding technicolor elements including streams of colorful beads shooting from their eyes, tiaras of light around their heads, and explosions of auras emitting from their bodies or from behind their ears. Once you have seen a painting by Stinkfish you will instantly recognize his work everywhere you see it. In an anonymous interview he did a few years ago with another well-known street artist, he had this to say about his work:
“The most important and clearest messages in my street art are the ideas of independence, anonymity, freedom and illegality. For me that´s the important thing in all this work and community.
Regarding the portraits I do, the idea is to speak about the importance of common people, like you, like me, like everyone in the common life, far away from the false world of the “famous” and “important” people of this system.”
Hopefully we get a chance to meet up with or interview him one of these days to find out more about his ideas and his message.