{"id":23713,"date":"2015-08-20T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=23713"},"modified":"2016-06-04T23:30:35","modified_gmt":"2016-06-05T02:30:35","slug":"complexo-do-alemao-artist-gives-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=23713","title":{"rendered":"Complexo do Alem\u00e3o Artist Gives Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/a><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Every day Mariluce Mari\u00e1 de Souza, 33, wakes up early to set up her stand at the Palmeiras cable car stop in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o<\/a>, in Rio’s North Zone<\/a>. The paintings she sells are her own interpretation of the community where she was born and raised: a blue cable car towers over colorful houses that cover the\u00a0hills from\u00a0top to bottom, a kite or two flying in the\u00a0orange-red sky.<\/p>\n

It all started when she and her\u00a0husband, Cl\u00e9ber, started a favela tour<\/a> business called Turismo no Alem\u00e3o to show tourists around their\u00a0community. Their intention was to bring in foreigners who were curious about favelas to stimulate the economy of the community and promote cultural exchange.<\/p>\n

\"Mariluce<\/a><\/p>\n

The couple realized that the visitors\u00a0didn’t have any Complexo do Alem\u00e3o-themed souvenirs to take back home after the tour, so Mariluce started decoupaging photos of the favela onto glass bottles to make some extra money off the tours. This was in 2012, around the time the cable car in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o<\/a> was inaugurated and violence in the\u00a0community appeared under control with the installation of a\u00a0Police Pacifying Unit<\/a> (UPP) there, allowing tourists who wouldn’t normally leave the South Zone<\/a> to venture north.<\/p>\n

“Our first souvenirs [to sell to tourists] were the glass bottles and I also started making some wooden boxes. But then I realized decoupaging was a lot of work, so I decided to try to draw those images. I made one, two, three boxes… Soon enough, Cl\u00e9ber was selling every single one,” Mariluce says.<\/p>\n

Soon, Mariluce was painting on canvases that were easy to fit into luggage and her art was being bought to be taken all over the world. The paintings were selling more than the tours, so she decided to focus on painting instead of the\u00a0tour guide business.<\/p>\n

\"Mariluce<\/a><\/p>\n

Perhaps this was a blessing in disguise: the couple’s tour company closed its doors in 2014 because\u00a0confrontations between the police and drug traffickers resumed and grew in\u00a0frequency\u00a0after a brief respite. This new wave of violence took the lives of many<\/a> (often at the hands of the police) and affected Cl\u00e9ber and Mariluce’s livelihood heavily: the company had previously provided tours for groups of up to 90 people, but tourists became reluctant to visit a community where shootings were reported every day. Turismo no Alem\u00e3o has been closed since.<\/p>\n

Mariluce and Cl\u00e9ber initially used their Facebook profile, Alem\u00e3o Morro<\/a> (now changed to Mariluce’s full name due to Facebook’s Standards and Practices), to tell positive stories about their community and promote their business. However the page gained another purpose when the violence returned: keeping residents informed of shootings and confrontations<\/a> around the community so areas of risk could\u00a0be avoided. The page is also used to promote Mariluce’s work, which is how she got invited\u00a0to speak<\/a> at Stanford University’s\u00a0Educational and Entrepreneurial Initiatives to Support Youth in Places of Violence conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“With time, the violence came back and people distanced themselves and we suspended the tour. We’re not giving tours anymore. And the selling of my\u00a0art became our only income,” Mariluce says.\u00a0“But everything I do, I think: ‘I want to do something for my community.’ Just painting and selling my art wasn’t helping, since I could no longer bring the tourists to the favela to spend their money in the favela, to have a cultural exchange with the residents and to help residents. So I started thinking about how I could help.<\/p>\n

\"Mariluce<\/a><\/p>\n

Her stand in the Palmeiras cable car stop\u2014the last stop on the 16-minute journey across 13 communities\u2014is located right in front of the community library. With many children spending\u00a0their free time there,\u00a0Mariluce started putting on a painting workshop for children every Saturday to\u00a0teach the kids how\u00a0to paint. “It’s important to do this because the workshops fill\u00a0up the children’s free time and I am also motivating them to develop an interest in art and culture.”<\/p>\n

But Mariluce wanted to do still more for her community. “How can I share [my talents]\u00a0with the people here? So I started to paint the walls [of the community] because I realized they had tagging\u00a0with swear words on them, you know? Also with provocations between the police and the criminals. So I decided to erase those marks on the walls and put my drawings on them, but with the help of the children.”<\/p>\n

\"Mariluce's<\/a><\/p>\n

Each child paints a part of the planned mural and Mariluce gives the final touches to the work\u00a0of art. “Besides erasing all the swear words, the community looks prettier. Art always brings happiness.”<\/p>\n

The painting of the walls is done on demand through Mariluce’s Facebook profile. If a resident wants their\u00a0beco<\/em>\u00a0(alleyway) painted, they get in touch through private message and nothing is charged from the people who ask for a little art near their home. For this purpose, she started a crowdfunding campaign so she can paint more locations across Complexo do Alem\u00e3o. Support Mariluce’s crowdfunding campaign\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas Every day Mariluce Mari\u00e1 de Souza, 33, wakes up early to set up her stand at the Palmeiras cable car stop in Complexo do Alem\u00e3o, in Rio’s North Zone. The paintings […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":23733,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1294,1268,1670,1284,1503,329],"tags":[396,1653,258,32,445,1561,37,15,194],"writer":[1356],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23713","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-communitymedia","8":"category-favelaculture","9":"category-favela-tourism","10":"category-interviews-profiles","11":"category-opportunities-to-support-favelas","12":"category-solutions","13":"tag-art","14":"tag-community-media","15":"tag-community-solution","16":"tag-complexo-do-alemao","17":"tag-entrepreneurship","18":"tag-favela-tour","19":"tag-north-zone","20":"tag-pacifying-police-unit","21":"tag-tourism","22":"writer-nicole-froio"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23713"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=23713"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=23713"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=23713"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=23713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}