Converse City Forests plants trees where trees don't grow
Converse expands its Converse City Forests campaign around the world and now it's Mexico City's turn, celebrating and highlighting the importance of cultural roots through sustainable art. This street art campaign was first launched in August 2019 as an artistic medium for social progress celebrated by artists. Converse City Forests aligns with the brand's vision of creating with intention, promoting ideas that accelerate progress, focusing on where the world needs change.
Members of the global community of creatives Converse All Stars have partnered with Converse to create a series of murals that celebrate the cultural roots of each country and its people. Artists use paint Graphenstone, It helps clean the air. This photocatalytic technology uses light energy to break down harmful pollutants in the air and convert them into harmless substances. Any surface covered with this paint becomes an active air-purifying surface that helps protect people from harmful gases. 4094 Trees and counting. This number represents the air-cleansing power of murals around the world.
For Mexico City, the Mexican muralist Edgar Flores “Saner” has been chosen, who developed an interest in drawing and Mexican Muralism from a very young age. Saner's work uses everyday life and its roots to create beings with popular pre-Hispanic reminiscences in a contemporary context. In addition to the Mexican masks, always present in his work, his characters wander in a reinterpreted Mexicanness, in which pre-Hispanic references coexist with current iconography, revealing a new vision of Mexican identity. For this mural made with Converse City forests It has been inspired by the Day of the Dead celebration by representing eternal life using flowers and catrinas as icons of Mexican culture.
Converse celebrates the duality of that Mexican tradition of returning loved ones to Earth, while creating fresh air in the community through an air-purifying mural. The meaning of the cycle of life is represented through this mural under the concept "Back to Earth", we will return to Earth the most important element that allows us to live on it: oxygen, highlighting our roots and Mexican culture with one of the most important festivals in the country.
From this perspective, the brand is partnering with Proyecto Origen to explore ways to reuse materials and innovate with dyes derived from natural and local ingredients, such as the Cempasúchil Flower.
With this project, Converse generates a dialogue and bridges between its inhabitants in the cities intervened by the murals. From the perspective of local creators, current times can be reflected with a view to building a better future, which leads us to reflect on a sustainable world, careful of natural resources and providing a different perspective that originates in new generations.
EN 
ES