Urban art presents an inconsistency: while it gains increasing recognition as cultural heritage, the ephemeral nature challenges traditional conservation paradigms. This dilemma was particularly evident in Santiago Maldonado´s murals in the city of 25 de Mayo, Buenos Aires, Argentina, where an unusual approach combined interdisciplinary research with community participation, redefining the preservation parameters for this type of artistic expression.
Heritage conservation is traditionally carried out by specialists in the field. However, regarding mural art and especially street art, interventions often require wide range of actors’ involvement. Dialogue and collaboration with community, where these artworks are harboured, become essential, directly shaping the decision-making process and influencing the conservator's approach. In this sense, conservation not only serves to recover and safeguard cultural assets, but also encourage meaningful discussion. This interaction also fosters a dialogue that deeply impact and transform those involved in the process of valuing the artworks. At the same time, it helps building relationships that encourage new ways of understanding these artworks—imbued with meanings and values that go beyond the purely aesthetic.
In 2021, with the support of the Ministry of Culture of Argentina, through the involvement of the 25 de Mayo community and the artist´s family, neighbours and friends, TAREA Centre took charge on Santiago Maldonado´s urban murals preservation. Santiago was an artist deeply involved with the community, the environment, and the struggle for the ancestral rights of indigenous peoples. Some of the interventions he carried out demonstrate the significant socio-political ideas to which he was committed. Maldonado´s figure has had a national and international impact, especially since his death in 2017, in the context of the eviction of the Mapuche community in the province of Chubut in the Argentinean Patagonia.
This work is based on conservation task carried out on five urban murals, created by Santiago in his hometown, 200 km from Argentine capital. The paintings were made up of various supports, formats and techniques and presented different problems, mostly associated with the environment, mainly due to technical flaws and the fast aging of low-grade materials.
Recuperación del color en Han pasado
Throughout five campaigns, artworks were extensively documented. The paintings were photographed, materially studied, and historical investigation was conducted. This entire research allowed to explore the context of the murals and elucidate the message that each piece tried to convey, as well as to delve into the techniques and methodologies of the artist. The collected data required a processing and interpretation stage that helped propose a preservation strategy in line with urban art issues. Only three murals by Santiago, located on the railway party wall, were intervened. With the help of the local community, the legendary paintings were retouched, in areas where its chromatic intensity had faded, using photographs of the paintings taken shortly after they were executed as a reference. Given the unique characteristics of these ephemeral works, all processes were outside the norms of the discipline. To address these concerns a document was drafted to stablish the steps to follow, created by the same community along with Maldonado´s family and the advice and recommendations from TAREA´s conservation specialists.
Since foundation, in the 1980s, TAREA Centre has been dedicated to preserve cultural heritage. Likewise, its scientific department early establishment, reflects the interest in applying science to the paintings study. In 2004, the institution merged with the National University of San Martín, and since then, TAREA's role has evolved in graduate and postgraduate programmes development, as well as public and private institutions advising on conservation issues. In order to carry out this unique and outstanding project, an interdisciplinary team was assembled including conservators-restorers, scientists, archaeologist, postgraduate and graduate students, as well as a photographer.
It is important to highlight, TAREA´s working group accompanied the entire Maldonado´s conservation process with virtual meetings, aimed at complementing and sharing the different processes carried out. The 25 de Mayo community participated in all stages, ranging from teenagers to elderly adults, thus fulfilling one of the main objectives of the project.
TAREA led the task, creating spaces for interaction, reflection and consensus among Santiago Maldonado's family, local residents, and authorities. Throughout this process, all actors collaborated to promote a wide range of educational and cultural activities. Dialogue among art, conservation, and community transformed the initiative into an educational project for all people involved, and different strategies were developed to preserve Maldonado's murals, considered to be traces of the late Santiago.
However, the project led by TAREA demonstrated that conservation of these artworks cannot be limited only on material intervention. Although the murals were restored using singular methodologies, their ultimate fate revealed the limits of physical preservation: three years later, a change in the local government led to the demolition of the walls that housed them. This outcome does not invalidate the process, but rather shifts the focus to what is truly enduring: interdisciplinary documentation and community participation as acts of resistance in the face of material loss. In this way, work with the community ranged from the transfer of knowledge to their active participation in the conservation of the murals. The exhaustive photographic documentation, the collected oral testimonies, the scientific studies, and the symbolic replicas created by the community constitute, nowadays, the only testimonies of Santiago Maldonado´s murals. When materiality is vulnerable, like in case of street art, the documented memory —and the collective process that generated it— becomes the true heritage.
This experience prompted us to reflect on the need to prioritize, in future projects, strategies that go beyond the physical: from accessible digital platforms to the integration of these narratives into local educational policies. Since street art is destined to disappear, preservation can no longer be measured in terms of time, but in the ability, within the community that reinterprets it, to generate lasting dialogues.