A massive mural of a Latin American Mona Lisa, made from over 100,000 recycled bottle caps, adorns a building in El Salvador, blending Renaissance art with environmental message
SAN SALVADOR: A massive mural of a Latin American Mona Lisa now adorns a building in El Salvador. The artwork is composed entirely of recycled plastic bottle caps.
Venezuelan artist Oscar Olivares created the 13-metre-tall piece in the Zacamil suburb of San Salvador. He used more than 100,000 caps collected, washed, and sorted by local residents.
“I wanted to portray a Latin American Mona Lisa,” Olivares told AFP. He described the original as an icon of the Italian Renaissance.
The artist stated that the world is now living through a new Renaissance. He drew inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci and pointillist painter Paul Signac.
Instead of a pastoral background, Olivares depicted colourful homes, a blue mountain, and a checkerboard sky. The sun-kissed face uses red, orange, and yellow caps to capture the subject’s gaze and smile.
Her jewellery, hairstyle, and dress evoke a modern Latina woman. The mural was completed in three weeks in the Mejicanos area.
This suburb was once controlled by violent gangs before President Nayib Bukele’s security crackdown. Olivares hopes his work changes viewers’ perception of plastic waste.
He has created similar murals in Venezuela, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, France, and Italy. Olivares has found use for over 2 million caps in more than two dozen installations worldwide.
