Vida in Plaza de la Hoja

Located in down town of Bogotá, between Avenida Carrera 30 and 22 street, we can found the biggest mural of Colombia.

A leaf of 5,000 sqm in the ground of a plaza that shouts the word “vida”, remembering the 457 families that a couple of months ago have been relocated in this new urbanization of social homes, that have to reconstruct their future together so they can move forward.

Each family comes from a different place of the country: from the Pacific, from the Caribbean, from the Amazon zone and from the mountain. The only thing that they shared is the drama of running away without looking backwards, leaving their lands, their costumes and most of their families, as concecuens of the terrible armed conflict that the country is living.
In this context Boa Mistura’s mural appears, with the participation of the neighbors and the inhabitants, to transform the new place where they live and to build new relationships, enforcing the community’s new identity. The work consists in a giant leaf, formed by hundreds of little leafs that are organized in a way that can be read the word VIDA (life). Each one of those leafs belongs to the most significant species of the different ecosystems of the country, making a parallelism with the people that live in this new building with the symbolic representation of their place of origin.
The painting is made on the floor and his perception is totally different if you step on it, or if it is contemplated by the windows of the building. Standing at the center you can perceive only geometric shapes and colors, but from above it finds its meaning: a new beginning full of hope.

Plaza de la Hoja, Bogotá, Colombia
Artist: Boa Mistura
thanks to: Bogotá Humana, Secretaría del Habitat, along with Montevivienda
with the sponsorship of: Fundación Orbis Pintuco