Artist highlight: Tania Brun, alias Babayaga

Today I came across a blog post about an artist I have been trying to learn more about about since I first saw her work in Peru. Artist Tania Brun of Arequipa, uses the pseudonym Babayaga, a witch from Russian folklore with a wooden leg who eats children. Her artwork, which I saw printed in intricate detail on t-shirts in Lima caught my eye.

Featured in the Buenos Aires, Argentina-based zine Money In My Pocket, Babayaga describes her work (translated here):

     The influences for my drawings are the Mexican engravers, especially José Guadalupe Posada, the Mexican tradition of Day of the Dead, Catholic art of the era of the Viceroyalty, but also the cultural manifestations of people here in the mountains of Peru, like the way they decorate their combi-vans and moto-taxis and also the concert posters of different cumbia groups that can be seen pasted around the city.
     In 2004 I left the faculty of art because it was not for me and I kept drawing on my own, then in 2007 after a trip to Mexico, where I found it incredible the familiar and daily ways they deal with death there, I started this series of illustrations with the theme of death.
     The technique I use is ink on paper; I began to use these materials because I could then use the images for screen printing on t-shirts and that I think is a good way to make my work available to those who like it and I can share with them.

I love that she prints her designs on t-shirts. Seeing the shirts in Lima, a clothing manufacturing center of South America, her designs distinguish themselves from the other million designs flooding the streets. In Lima one can buy a Peru-manufactured Armani Exchange shirt for $5 before it is exported, and on the street it seems like everyone and their grandma (literally) is wearing a brand-name shirt that would cost $40 or more in another country. But when I realized that those Armani shirts were really just shirts (and their designs rarely consist of much more than the letter 'A' or 'X'), I gained a new appreciation for shirts with a great design, story, and artwork, like those of Babayaga.

View more of Babayaga's designs on Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/xbabayagax/

In search of Babayaga

Right now I am in Arequipa and I am continuing a search for the person behind some really cool shirt designs with the label 'Babayaga - Arequipa'. All of my search tactics have failed. The website listed on the label, http://no.jodas.pe/, is a joke, I assume, as it doesn't exist and translates to something to something like http://areyouf.ingkidding.com/.

I've tried Google, but only find info about the witch-like character from Slavic folklore who eats children. I tried searching for people mentioning Babayaga on Twitter; no luck. My best bets in finding Babayaga are through the 2 stores where I found his her shirts in Lima, Pulga (Miraflores), and Neomutatis (Barranco). Until I hear back from them, I'll continue wandering around Arequipa with my eyes peeled for Babayaga designs and asking people if they know anything about him her, "Do you know anything about this guy girl from Arequipa who makes really cool black and white t-shirt designs with day-of-the-dead-like images? I think he's she's in a band, too." Yeah, that's about all I've got to go on.

UPDATE! 7/25/2010:  Eureka!  Tania Brun, alias Babayaga talks about some of her work in a post here:  http://bit.ly/9tX8J5.  And she's on Flickr! http://www.flickr.com/photos/xbabayagax/.  She informs me that http://no.jodas.pe/ is no joke, it's just a website that hasn't been developed yet.