El Tacón de Oro
Mexico City
2023

Strokes of blue for the Golden Heel. An art mural for the local shoe-repair shop.

Before

“El Tacón de Oro” (The Golden Heel) is a family-run shoe repair shop established in the 1960’s in a middle class neighborhood in Mexico City (Col. Ciudad de los Deportes). This is one of the few stores in this part of town that have survived gentrification and the effects of the global pandemic. The shop’s facade already showed clear signs of decay, and the outer shutter had an old advertisement of a shoe company that no longer sponsored the store.

Process

Super Eclectic, together with Mexican artist Luis Carlos Hurtado, proposed to give the store a new and uplifted image with an artistic mural that would replace the old, outdated ad. The idea was to use the original design of the shop’s business cards as inspiration for a traditional Mexican “Rótulo” –a crafty, hand-painted sign that serves as an advertisement, used mostly by small business as an affordable form of commercial art in working and middle-class neighborhoods. This particular Rótulo was quite intricate, and its production was patiently developed in different sessions over the course of multiple days.

Results

El Tacón de Oro has now a highly original sign that is also a work of art, making it stand out from the rest of the local shops. The mural was executed entirely by hand, in close dialogue with Don Ramon, the owner of the store.
Super Eclectic would like to give a big shout out to Luis Carlos Hurtado for contributing to this project with his artistic talent, and Nordisk Kulturfond’s Globus Opstart for the support.