If you want to see what is happening in the young artistic scene of Bogotá now, these places are where you should be

We know that the artistic-cultural scene in Bogotá has been increasing in the last years. Many groups and collectives have succeeded in generating a broader view about actual art; they have created more opportunities to capital art to get out of those big warehouses, museums, borough theaters, gatherings of bohemians in any bar or library. Art has begun to be seen in its entirety; that is younger, independent, and diverse.

There are a lot of places that have emerged for this interest to promote art and culture, but we think that these three places are the most popular in the new young culture of the city.

So if you are young or you have a young soul, you should come to these places, discover them with us, live it for yourself, and keep believing in new proposals.

Rat Trap

This house, located in Calle 61a # 17-26, manages cultural projects focused on underground art (graffiti, serigraphy, fanzines, and more) and independent music. Many young people have had the chance to listen new musical proposes in this place while they watch screen-printed pieces like a unusual gallery: it’s probable that sounds Tumbas in the place, with all the people around trying to come forward with their fanzinez, trying to show an art that for being young. It should be autonomous, underground, explosive.

La Aldea 

If you take a walk in Las Aguas neighborhood and arrive to Calle 17 # 02-77, go inside without a doubt; you’ll see a mood that move about many nuances. This is what characterized the house that doesn’t want to be “cultural”, because we can find those “cultural” houses in every street in the city. Its name says everything: it is a space for communion. This place promote the cultural exchange between artists and amateurs. Concerts, slam poetry, workshops, theater performance, all things that a young person wants to see in only one place, to call it home, Aldea. It’s collective creation.

La Valija De Fuego

We don’t know what’s going to happen when we get in this library, located in Carrera 7 # 46-68. The space is so reduced where excels Punk and Post-80’s that sounds softly; Rimbaud’s pins with a leather jacket and Poe’s pins with sunglasses; at the back, a Toxicomano’s graffiti saying “Books not dead”; the coffee table with a book about The Clash and besides it’s a children’s book like Chigüiro’s stories. Here is a movement of books emerged of independent publishing houses of Bogota; conversations about anarchism and science fiction; stickers made by urban artists like Erre and Lesivo. Maybe for being a library and believe in the literary universe, this place is so opened to the different cultural proposes to evidence that artistic world is more heterogeneous than closed and with the last word.

Latin American Post | Felipe González

Copy edited by Laura Rocha Rueda