Puerto Rico: Another Way to Look Up · Global Voices
Alfredo Richner

Puerto Rican street artist and photographer Enrique Arce, known as Aslan, (@ASLANTWIT) has been posting photographs of airplanes on his Instagram account for over six months now as part of his “#parriba” (upwards) series. The project looks to engage with the community via a “Scavenger Hunt” [es] challenge detailed on his blog. Selections from the series are printed and pasted unto tiles, which are then tacked on to walls and buildings throughout San Juan. Those lucky enough to be the first to find one of these tiles and send a picture to Aslan with its location win a copy of the tile for them to keep.
In a recent interview published by Global Voices, Aslan notes: “I started collecting [the photographs] at first without a clear motive. It wasn't until I decided to work on the series that I realized that this exploration could lend itself to a different type of artistic creation that would attract attention. Its interesting to see how simple ideas such as looking up (or “p'arriba”) and photographing an airplane are the ones that attract more people.”
Below you will find ten of my favorite #parriba airplane photographs from the gigantic series – with over 600 photographs to date! All photos are republished with the artist's permission. Follow Aslan as he continues to collect more photographs through Twitter and his blog.
The following paintings belong to Aslan's collection of Creaturas en limbo (Creatures In Limbo), presented here to show some of the artist's other work. More can be seen in his blog.