Bastardilla is the name of an urban artist who was originally born in Medellín but grew up in the Colombian capital of Bogotá. Her work aims to create a dialogue with passersby on the street and the thick lines she uses in her creations tell stories she hopes will connect with the locals where her murals are created.
At the age of 13, Bastardilla discovered that walking on the street and wandering was an experience she loved, but for some time she thought that painting without permission was a complicated and dangerous endeavor. The moment came however, when her gaze broadened and she began to see the movement of graffiti and urban art as an opportunity to be in line with her interests so she put aside her prejudices and fears.
Today, her work is scattered around various corners of the globe, painted on walls, doors, and corrugated shutters of shopfronts; her characters exhibiting female faces with Latin features, often semi-hidden by their hair, and almost always accompanied by flowers, hummingbirds, and glitter splashes that attract the attention of people passing by on the street. Often, her works speak to the violent circumstances that women in Latin America sometimes experience. Bastardilla paints characters that originating from intimate, ancestral, personal, and public stories and her work becomes a social example, learning from other people, and from herself.
You can follow Bastardilla on her Instagram account here: https://www.instagram.com/imagenbastarda/.