#GRAFFITI I FREE#

As a creative act, it enables artists or writers to reach beyond the realities and limits of day to day life, to give form to their feelings and, in the words of one Argentine street art collective, “ get out all the shit that makes sick“. By tapping into an existing cultural stock of metaphors, icons and symbols graphic interventions can stimulate an emotional response, igniting anger, restoring hope or fuelling disgust at the status quo.īy the same token, there is sometimes a restorative or cathartic element to graffiti production. By providing an expressive space where others have been shut down, graffiti circumvents attempts at censorship and it reminds the public that there is an alternative discourse, ideology or way of doing things.

#GRAFFITI I FREE#

By observing, interviewing and engaging with such communities of practice, scholars can provide valuable insights into the lifeworlds and environments that graffiti writers and street artists themselves inhabit, the ways that they perceive of their own actions vis-à-vis broader society, as well as the ways that the experience and practice of inscription the invention and remixing of styles, motifs and icons can itself shape and alter one’s sense of self and of possibility.Īnonymised slogans (“Down with the dictatorship” “Democracy lives” “Freedom to political prisoners”), elaborate graphics produced under the cover of darkness, and seemingly abstract interventions that come about as a result of aesthetic free play can all work together to break the complicity of silence under authoritarianism and erode its power. Taking a predominantly urban focus, these studies acknowledge how graffiti and street art has come to form “ a community of practice with its own learned codes, rules, hierarchies of prestige, and means of communication“. We might therefore wonder whether graffiti is a socially legitimate form of expression and testimony, or, a kind of social deviance requiring intervention and resolution?Ī range of ethnographic works examine the expressive, embodied and performative elements of graffiti production. While historians have surveyed graffiti as a supplementary source of commentary on processes of social and political change, criminologists have often taken a greater interest in the more ‘illicit’ dimensions of the practice by exploring the motivations of taggers and the ‘effectiveness’ of punitive measures for curbing their activities. However, in recent years, the spread and popularity of graffiti across the globe has ignited new research agendas that cut across disciplinary divides.

The word graffiti is derived from the Italian, graffio, meaning to scratch or inscribe. Graffiti is one of several related terms – see also street art, muralism, pixacao, stenciling – used to describe words or images that have been etched, scrawled or painted onto walls, pavements or other surfaces, usually outdoors and/or within public view. Examples of graffiti date back to ancient times, with individuals making their mark in the homes, temples, marketplaces and iconic edifices of early civilizations from Athens and Pompeii to the Yucatán Peninsula.