Artist: Troy Gustavo Quesada Monge
Mural Title: Fuga de Libertad
Costa Rica has become an increasingly urban country with growing cities. Consequentially, this increases the demands imposed on citizens who day by day fight to maintain a dignified life. However, this fight and these demands imply a loss of freedom:
- People do not seek employment out of passion, they seek whatever pays best. And as Facundo Cabral states: “Those who work in something they don’t like are unemployed.”
- People do not enjoy nature. Television has come be its substitute.
- People are forced to buy more toys and they become attached to them as modern life demands.
- People are induced to be increasingly materialist and empty. The most noble and altruistic ideals do not coincide with the market.
- People walk in fear on the streets and live in terror in their homes because the city produces a continual increase in violence and insecurity. Today we live behind bars in our very homes. Is that not a loss of freedom?
- People do not enjoy the company of their children, of the blowing wind, the sun, a peaceful walk, the sound of water running through the streams or a quiet talk with friends appreciating a sunset.
- Modern life wants to take away our right to live free of stress, of pressures, of materialistic demands and hegemonic interests.
In this sense butterflies, with their tranquil and almost weightless flight, evokes the freedom that we need so much. The freedom of being able to dream, to be idealists, to be humble people who know how to enjoy nature and the most innocent and basic pleasures of human existence.
Our mural speaks of people who in their imagination have run away from the hectic stresses of the city, towards the magical world of the butterflies who with their freedom captivate us and put us under a spell while at the same time make us fly.
The butterfly is a fountain of mysticism and of the imaginary. Butterflies inspire within us the call for freedom and remind us not to lose out on the beauty and marvel of life.
