The woman with flowing hair and one eye is an artwork by the Argentinian street artist Caro Pepe. Initially, she painted in a studio, and street art was still unfamiliar to her. When she went on holiday to Berlin, she disliked the feeling of being a tourist, so she considered taking a course in something. The encouragement from the German street artists was “Look! Here’s a wall you can paint on!” Caro tried it, and even though it wasn’t a particularly large piece, it took a week to complete, but she was hooked! The opportunity to take up space and express herself was something she enjoyed.
The woman you see in front of you came to the artist on a sleepless night in Buenos Aires. She began sketching a large head, a small body, and big eyes on paper, and that became the basis for her characters. The piece on the wall explores an inner world and the complexity of emotions, representing the artist’s alter ego. She speaks and acts in ways the artist doesn’t quite dare, communicating fully without fear but with a fragility that Caro Pepe doesn’t recognize in herself.
The woman becomes her parallel personality expressing an opinion about something the artist herself experiences and witnesses. The one-eyed aspect symbolizes the limited perspectives of people and how through that limitation, we construct a reality that may not be whole and true. The hair fluttering in the wind becomes a symbol of freedom, carrying all the memories of places she’s visited and people she’s met.