Favela Painting Project: Can a Little Paint Change Entrenched Poverty?

Koolhaas and Urhahn recruited locals in Rio’s Santa Marta favela to spend a month learning painting techniques and transforming the gray-scale favelas into a vivid complex that looks as if someone took a prism and shattered it, scattering light across the whole favela.

The result–if you like color–is impressive; you can see before and after shots here.

The project is similar to a larger, worldwide initiative called Let’s Colour, which intends to “transform grey spaces with vibrant colour.”

On the one hand, these types of projects are appealing. They leave foreigners who come into “downtrodden” spaces feeling good about themselves and their work, good about what they can “give” or “share” with other people, and good about the connections they make with people who live in “grey spaces.”

On the other hand, I can’t help but wonder what happens when the artists go home and the colors fade. These types of projects are exciting and even temporarily transformative, perhaps, but they don’t lead to real social change. They don’t solve–or even really address–the kinds of problems that crowd people into tiny, grey concrete homes with little or no services. And even when these projects pay the painters, as Favela Painting does, one has to consider whether these projects are anything more than the do-gooder’s equivalent of crack: a quick hit of a feel-good sensation that eventually wears off.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your opinions in the comments.

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