“I designed this piece to help something alive to keep on living”
In the north of Peru, in Piura, you can go and swim with the turtles that are living there. When I went it was the middle of summer but even so, the water was so cold! For a small fee you can take a tour to go out into the Pacific Ocean and swim with turtles, and really you have the chance to be amongst so many giant turtles!
But the people living there are poor, like the fishermen and those in the community. It was necessary to address how the turtles could be preserved, and make sure that the people were taking better care of them. Before they would hunt them or feed them bad things or not leave them in peace to procreate. But this place, El Ñuro, was like a goldmine of turtles! Yet there were no laws, and the fishermen didn’t really see or consider the importance of these animals.
This social project, that was with the World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF Peru), had a lot of impact in these communities. I created this graphic for a poster that you can still see on so many walls around the community! For me that is the relevance of taking part in this, that people might come up to me and offer to buy me a beer, or you know we also made t-shirts with the graphic, and you can see this.
Everyone loves to watch and swim with the turtles, and now there will always be tourists there in the community to help preserve them. They are taking care of this project and growing it, and now they have a better community. This project was something like ten years ago, but it still surprises me to find the turtle murals there whenever I visit.
Cherman is represented by BLOC ART