“Maestro del mercado”
5 meter x 2.7 meter.
Spraypaint on concrete wall.
Tymon de Laat 2024.

This wall was made during the 2 week residency in Lagos Portugal for @lac_associacao_cultural. Depicted you see a Mexican man that I photographed in Atempan. A small town of 22.000 people up in the rainy mountains of Puebla. Atempan is known for it’s enormous market compared to the town size. The subject is the man who arranges the market set up in the early morning and covers basically the whole town with tarpaulins. He and his team do this mamoth task in just a few hours by attaching the rain covers to buildings and landposts, sometimes supported by long sticks to make sure the rainwater does not get caught in the middle but seeps to the sides. I was amazed at their speed of doing the set up and arranging the place in a way so all the goods like corn, peppers, clothing and agua de miel, sold by locals that gather there every saturday, don’t get soaked.

As you might know by now I like to paint people in places least expected, in this case Lagos. A small surf town on the coast of the Algarve region. A bustling town that has this wall placed amidst their commercial center. I hope that visitors of the wall are wondering why a Mexican man is painted here and get a spark of curiosity that might lead into interest into Mexico in this case. As per usual I have also take photos in Lagos and it will serve to grow my image database to tell the story of the Algave next time I will be in a place far away, a place where the next visitors might not know the story of Lagos. This way all my past en future walls are connected and tell a story about humanity in general. Some might call it anthropology light😉. For me they are remnants of travels that I made in the past and people I have met on the road.

I would like to extend my grattitude to the tremendous team of LAC who made this project a dream come true. Experimenting with techniques on the lino print that I posted before and seeing all the artists that were involved working on their own style and collaborating amongst eachother. It was a blast❤️🙌🏼🙌🏼