Egyptian political artist Ganzeer was first featured in Political Graffiti two months ago after the Egyptian government and state-sponsored media conducted a campaign to tarnish the artist’s image. Since then, Ganzeer was profiled in The New York Times and is in New York City. After meeting him for the first time after his talk at Interference Archive in Brooklyn on July 23, he agreed to sit down for an interview.

Ryan Purcell: Where does the name “Ganzeer” come from? 

Ganzeer: Ganzeer is Arabic for “speed chain,” the sort of chain typically seen on bikes. My thinking behind the name is that these chains aren’t usually the source of motion on a bicycle, but as a mere connector it enables the motion to happen, which is very much how I feel about the role of artists in society.

RP: Can you describe the first time you produced graffiti? 

G: The very first time was in 2008. I knew nothing about making street art; I was not very much a hands on person. I was sketching a lot, but a lot of the work I was doing also involved using the computer a lot as opposed to using paint and spray-paint, and like messy tools. You know? Some friends of mine in Alexandria, much younger than myself — Aya Tarek, Wensh, and Nabil — they had already been doing street art for a while in Alexandria, and they were telling me that I should come up to Alexandria, which is a few hours away from Cairo by train. We scouted some walls, each one of us came up with an idea, and we helped each other. Without their knowledge, I wouldn’t have been able to make my first piece. 

It was three monkeys, but instead of the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, it was reversed. So there was a monkey looking — seeing through binoculars — another monkey who was speaking through a mega phone, and another monkey who was listening through this listening device. I sketched it out first on a piece of paper, and then had it scanned and fixed it up digitally. We printed the image on transparent sheets, and cut through them to make a stencil. Then you staple them to the wall you’re doing.

That piece lasted only about a week before it was censored, covered in black paint. But my friends had been doing street art for two years, and none of their pieces were ever censored. 

RP: When you were making art during the Egyptian revolution, were you aware of how it was influencing the protests? 

G: Everyone cheered for my slogan “Down with Mubarak and his Family;” it was meaningful to a lot of people to see it in public space. Imagine you and everyone you know knows something, which is spoken at little cafes and on the street. And one day that thing is finally chanted out loud in big numbers; and not only that, but that thing is written in public space; this thing that everyone knows but no one’s allowed to talk about in public. It’s kinda like that, but this thing has kinda been weighing on people’s chests for so long, just being spoken, and being written in public space was so massive and so important. 

Sarah Carr cc via Flickr

Of course, the more its written, though, the more it exists in public space, the less significant it is. You need to up your game. For example, if you spray the same slogan the people cheer the first time they see it, and maybe the fiftieth or the hundredth it just becomes so normal and so whatever in public space. But maybe there are still things that need to be pushed, and there are still nerves that need to be pressed, right? There will always be an elephant in the room. 

You realize that you always have to up your game, whether that means saying the same thing differently, or saying something different. So, maybe just a shitty little slogan sprayed quickly is not impactful anymore, and you need to do a nice designed stencil and that grabs people’s attention. And when you have more of those, you take it bigger to a mural size. Also, maybe the message itself must be changed. So when Mubarak was out of the picture, “Down with Mubarak” is out, and now we have to move on to “okay, actually the military that everyone is cheering is actually the problem.” 

Everyone was ready for “Down with Mubarak” — it had been thirty years, everyone was sore. But with the military, everyone was like “What do you mean, they were with us?” And maybe they’re not so ready about it. That’s when things become a little tricky, a little more difficult, when you start tackling things people are maybe no so willing to accept so easily. You have to become more subversive, less direct. 

So, with the Tank vs bicycle piece, the subversiveness is in the process of making it, where the tank takes the most time to make. When people pass, especially military police, they think you’re making a pro-military piece; they only see you drawing a really big tank. But once you’re done with the tank and you put in the bicycle, the message becomes complete, which alters the entire message of the piece. So the aspect that gives it bite should take the least amount of time so you can do it quickly and get away.

Courtesy of Ganzeer

Courtesy of Ganzeer

Courtesy of Ganzeer

RP: Who censors Egyptian political graffiti? 

G: When it’s officially a government decision, the military would cover the murals and graffiti with paint — this really horrible color on most walls in Cairo, this beige, off-white “blah” color. It’s kind of the official government supply of paint they use to cover all the walls in Cairo anyway. But for the most part, acts of censorship have been done by citizens, more so than the government.

Courtesy of Ganzeer

RP: What is the greatest source of inspiration for the content of your art?

G: It’s there in the public discourse. It’s what people are taking about; it’s an important issue. We’re all aware of it, it’s there. Other pieces require actual research for concrete information. But in general, it would be based on some kind of idea. 

One of the pieces I am working on right now, has to do with a cop who was charged with the murder of a suspect [Eric Garner]. Everyone knows about it, and it was in the news for a while, and now its just gone. 

RP: Do you perceive injustice in the United States? 

G: Police brutality, which in probably endemic everywhere in the world. The United States, and New York City in particular, is not exempt from that problem. The last incident is the guy who was choked to death for no reason whatsoever. He did not have any weapons on him, and all the eyewitnesses even claimed that he was breaking up a fight. The police arrested him for selling cigarettes illegally — which were not in his possession — and in the process of arresting him, choked him to death. The NYPD does not show shame for these acts. 

Police brutality definitely exists in Egypt and Bahrain. I think it exists in most places. Maybe we must reexamine the very concept of a police force in general, because there was a time when police forces did not exist. 

“Be Brutal” (2014) courtesy of Ganzeer

RP: Do you perceive economic injustice in the world today?

G: The global economic system, as a whole, which is heralded by the United States in particular, is to a large extent to blame for injustice throughout the world. There is already a lot of evidence pointing to the United States and the IMF leading to a lot of huge economic gaps in a lot of places in the world, and the United States itself is not exempt from that issue. There are places like Switzerland or Sweden, which have a more mixed economic system where the government is involved in providing public services; but in the United States you find that almost everything is done by a private company, and private companies only seek profit. So that is the problem. Then there is the problem of exporting that mentality throughout the world. 

Courtesy of Ganzeer

Courtesy of Ganzeer

Courtesy of Ganzeer

I think the United States has done a pretty good job at propagating the notion that a dictatorship  is somehow linked to communism and socialism, because a lot of America’s enemies in the past have been countries like Russia or Cuba. Now, to a large extent, it has a touchy relationship with China. And it’s not like China is communist anyway, for that matter. But where I come from, the notions of dictatorship, fascism, and authoritarianism can very much be linked to capitalism, because we in Egypt have been suffering from a capitalist dictatorship for a very long time, supported by the United States — it is a capitalist dictatorship. Somehow in the vocabulary of Americans, capitalism does not go hand-in-hand. Where I come from, it is exactly the same thing, because that is what we had for a very long time; we have never experienced capitalism and democracy, it’s only been capitalism and dictatorship combined. Having capitalism obviously doesn’t mean that you’re living in a free world. Finally enough, dictatorships can also relish in capitalism — having power consolidated between yourself and a handful of businessmen, that’s pretty much the idea. 

RP: Do you have any advice for artists who want to use graffiti as a political force today?

G: Street artists are going to go out there and do something risky and dangerous, but they are going to put their ideas in public space. My only advice is make it worth while, whatever it is — worth the risk, and danger of putting it out there.

— 

Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [Wolfgang Sterneck via Flickr]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Egyptian Political Artist Ganzeer on Street Art and Political Protest appeared first on Law Street.

Last Friday, July 25, 2014, three Central American leaders  — Presidents Juan Olando Hernádez of Honduras, Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala, and Salvador Sánchez Cerén of El Salvador — convened at the White House to discuss with President Obama the recent wave of Central American immigrants, specifically unaccompanied minors, to the United States.

“Washington must understand that if you have a Central America with violence because of the drug traffic crime, a Central America without opportunities, without growth in the economy, it is going to always be a problem for the United States,” said President Hernández of Honduras. The root causes, Hernández went on, are not America’s lax border polices, but rather the demand for illegal drugs in North America, which fuels violence in Central America, causing migrants to flee their homes. In a joint statement on Friday, President Obama and the three Central American leaders pledged to address the “underlying causes of immigration by reducing criminal activity and promoting greater social and economic opportunity.”

What this estimation overlooks, though, are the perspectives of the immigrants themselves. What causes them to submit to a perilous exodus, vulnerable to a harsh desert climate, drug violence, and personal injury crossing rivers and fences, all at the likelihood of being detained by U.S. border security, and possibly being sent back? Drug violence may very well be a cause for the flight of immigrants, but I am skeptical to hear this from leaders of governments who have vested interests in the economic exploitation, and repression of their citizens. Rather, we should listen to the people.

In Central America, graffiti is a voice for a voiceless people: the agrarian peasants and the urban poor. Graffiti is an alternative medium of communication that broadcasts messages that corporate media outlets such as radio and television fail to incorporate. It is an open forum of dissent, writ large on the side of a government building, or across a freight car, traveling throughout the region. More importantly, graffiti is a vantage point from which we can discern the perspective of Central American immigrants, and the pressures behind their flight.

Ciudad de Juárez, the capital of Oaxaca, Mexico, six hundred miles from the Guatemalan border, is home to the Assembly of Revolutionary Artists of Oaxaca (ASARO). Comprised of multiple graffiti crews and independent artists, ASARO was forged in the summer 2006 following the violent state-oppression of teachers demanding better pay and working conditions. Forty-five hundred federal police forcibly removed the teachers from the streets, injuring 92 protesters and killing 17, including an American news correspondent. The brutal government crackdown on protests mobilized disparate activist groups against the government, which they saw as a common cause of their plights, and ASARO emerged as a visual amplification of their dissent through the streets of Ciudad de Juárez.

“Arte Del Pueblo y Para el Pueblo” (Art of the People for the People) courtesy of ian m via Flickr

What is more interesting, though, in regard to immigration to the United States, is the political motive and content of the ASARO graffiti. In their images and slogans, we find the root cause of strife afflicting the people in Mexico and Central America, and ultimately the systemic causes for the massive waves of immigration to the U.S. over the last five years.

“The assembly of revolutionary artists arises from the need to reject and transcend authoritarian forms of governance and institutional, cultural, and societal structures, which have been characterized as discriminatory for seeking to impose a single version of reality and morality[.]” – ASARO Manifesto

In Oaxaca, where 80.3 percent of the population lack sanitation services, street lighting, piped water, and paved roads, ASARO illuminated institutional prejudices against ethnicity, class, and sex, keeping eight out ten people in extreme poverty. Their graffiti critiqued the violence of the Mexican government in the 2006 uprising, but also demanded  equal rights for disenfranchised groups like farm workers, indigenous people, and women, as well as exposing the hypocrisies and corruption of the ruling elite. Slogans such as “Todo el Poder al Pueblo. Colonos en Pie de Lucha” (All the Power to the People. Neighbors on our feet to fight!) incited reflection and fiery debates on issues ranging from the privatization of public goods, to gender equality, democratic participate, and Indigenous rights. Moreover, images of the Oaxacan governor labeled “Cynic, Thief, Autocrat, Repressor, Murders,” and “End Fascism in Mexico!” rallied protesters against the government.

Courtesy of natarén via Flickr

“Todo el poder al pueblo. Colonos en lucha” (All Power to the people. Neighbors, on their feet for the fight). Courtesy of nataren via Flickr.

In addition to social struggles in Mexico, ASARO’s political graffiti illustrate issues that affect Central America broadly, such as the economic exploitation of natural resources and labor by transnational corporations, as well as documenting the physical and emotional trauma of immigration. ASARO’s political graffiti critiqued the extraction of oil and minerals from Oaxacan land, which is exported by the Mexican government at an exorbitant profit, without benefit to the Oaxacan people. One ASARO poster featuring a barefoot peasant tilling the land read, “La Tierra es de queen la Trabaja” (The earth belongs to those who work it); a wood-cut block print depicted Uncle Sam under an eagle drinking from an oil can, kicking miniature figures with guns, who represent the Mexican people.

These critiques of foreign exploitation not only speak to conditions in Mexico and Central America, but suggest a system of global colonization by transnational corporations. A block print called Body Parts on Railroad (2010) documents the perils of immigration. Body parts litter train tracks leading to the U.S.: a leg labeled “Salvador,” a finger labeled “Mexico,” a hand “Honduras,” and a head “Guatemala.” Similarly, another block print depicts small animals standing at the opening of a sewer drain like those used by some immigrants to enter the U.S., that runs under a border fence replete with police and an American flag.

In all, the political graffiti of Oaxaca, Mexico demonstrates that there is much more to the immigration debate than just the quips of politicians. In order to understand the root cause of the recent wave of unaccompanied child immigrants, and in order to address this crisis adequately, discussions must include the perspectives of the immigrants themselves. Drug violence is not the only cause for immigration from Central America; but rather a host of systemic issues force immigrants to travel to the U.S. Government corruption and economic exploitation are, perhaps, the most intolerable conditions for the people, as evidenced by the ASARO graffiti. Only from the oppressed can we fully understand their oppression; graffiti is the voice of the subaltern.

 —
Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

 Featured image courtesy of [Fabricator77 via Flickr]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Graffiti Describes the Struggle of Immigrants and Undocumented Minors appeared first on Law Street.

Violence between Israel and Palestine has surged over the last month following a chain of antagonistic murders in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. On June 12, three Israeli students— Eyal Yifrah, Gilad Shaar, and Naftali Frenkel— were killed. Their bound and partially burned bodies were found in a field northwest of Hebron two weeks later. In retaliation, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy, Muhammed Abu Khdeir, was abducted, bound, and burned alive one day after the burial of the three Israeli students. Khdeir’s cousin, 15-year-old Tariq Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian-American vacationing in East Jerusalem was arrested by Israeli police and beaten while in custody; videos of the boy’s bloody face circulating in social media have only magnified the emotional force behind the escalating tensions between the two countries, engendering missile exchanges between Israel and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. On Monday July 7, Israel authorized the mobilization of 40,000 reserve soldiers in preparation for an invasion of Gaza, which according to Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon “will not end within a few days.”

Amid the gruesome murders and savage beatings should it be surprising that graffiti has played a critical role in the escalating violence between Israel and Palestine? Since 2008, Price Tag attacks have been a growing phenomena in Israel, though primarily in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; they originated from the “Hilltop Youth” of the West Bank, illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land — 100 small outposts scattered on strategic hilltops. “A ‘price tag’ means that when the government of Israel decides to evict a settlement, an outpost, even the smallest wooden shack in the land of Israel — it has a price,” according to Moriah Goldberg, a 20-year-old Price Tagger. “Maybe it will make them think twice before they do it again.”

Attacks involve destruction of property perpetrated by Israeli extremists against Arabs —desecrating cemeteries, burning Korans, chopping down olive trees — as well as anti-Arab and anti-Christian defamatory graffiti slogans including the phrase “Price Tag.” “Price tag, King David is for the Jews, Jesus is garbage;” “Jesus is a son of bitch,” spray painted on the entrance of a church; “A good Arab is a dead Arab, Price Tag,” spray painted on a mosque; “Death to Arabs;”  “Enough Assimilation,” “Arab Labor = assimilation;” “Non-Jews in the area = enemies.”

Recently, however, Price Tag attacks have increased in frequency and grown more violent. Attacks have surged from a handful in 2008 to 23 already in 2014; along with slashing tires, Price Tag attackers have firebombed empty vehicles, leaving their signature graffiti marks in the wake of their destruction. In response to the arrest of Israeli suspects for the murder of Abu Khdeir, Price Taggers destroyed a light-rail station in East Jerusalem, leaving Hebrew graffiti reading”Death to Israel” across the burned-out edifice. Price Tag is a “shadowy network of clandestine cells,” according to a recent profile of the guerrilla graffiti group in Foreign Policy, posing a “danger to Israeli security. Future acts of vandalism against Palestinians could escalate tension beyond their current, already dangers levels.”

In 2012, the U.S. State Department began listing Price Tag attacks as acts of terrorism in the Global Terror Report, though Israel falls short of this judgement; on July 1, Israeli Defense Minister Ya’alon defined the attacks a “illegal organizing,” stipulating more severe sentences for the Jewish perpetrators. “[T]errorism is a suicide bomber in a crowded mall or someone who shoots people,” said Dani Dayan, the former director of the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization of municipal councils of Jewish settlements. Price Tag attacks should be treated as “extreme vandalism” or even “hate crime…There’s no comparison between this and real Palestinian terrorism[.]”

Whether or not Israel defines Price Tag as ‘terroristic,’ victims still consider the attacks state-condoned violence against non-Jews due to Israel’s apparent failure to prosecute. Historically, more than 90 percent of investigations into settler violence fail to lead to an indictment. According to Slate, while Israel has condemned the recent rise in Price Tag attacks, the response by authorities has been “charitably described as sluggish.” Between 2005 and 2013, 992 investigations of complaints of Israeli violence against Palestinians were conducted, yet only 7.8 percent led to indictments.

There have been quite a few arrests of Price Tag attackers, in fact; the most recent was July 1, when a 22-year-old Israeli was detained in connection with a Price Tag attack in which assailants torched a christian monastery, spray painting “Jesus is a monkey.” “It is unbelievable to us that Israel can catch enemies, very sophisticated enemies, overseas, but they can’t catch a bunch of punks who live here,” said Jawdat Ibrahim, the owner of a local restaurant. “These attacks happen in an atmosphere, maybe an atmosphere that says, ‘Hey, it’s okay, you’re never gonna get caught.’ ” In a poll released last week by Israel’s Channel 10 News, almost 60 percent of those surveyed agreed that the government “didn’t really want to catch” Price Tag attackers, indicating that Israel condones this violence, or at least allows it to happen.

“There’s no doubt that the Price Tag phenomenon is very influenced by political processes,” said Hebrew University political sociology lecturer Eitan Alum. “They’re violent acts with logical and political goals.” Yet Price Tag is is also an expression of hate, inciting violence among and between Palestinian and Israeli communities.

“‘Price Tag’ and ‘Hilltop Youth’ are sweet, sugary nicknames, and the time has come to call this monster by its name,” famed Israeli author Amos Oz publicly declared on May 14th, 2014, his 75th birthday. “Hebrew neo-Nazis. The only difference between European neo-Nazi groups and Price Tag in Israel,” Oz continued, “lies in the fact that our neo-Nazi groups enjoy the tailwind of quite a few lawmakers who are nationalists, and possibly even racists, and also a number of rabbis who provide them with a basis that, in my opinion, is pseudo-religious.”

Oz’s sobering, if however startling, remarks point to pressing issues regarding the difference between Price Tag and other instances of political graffiti, globally. While graffiti artists like Ganzeer in Egypt, and Captain Borderline in Brazil have used their graffiti to critique oppressive government apparatuses, Price Tag specifically targets elements of the Israeli people based on race, ethnicity, and religion; the group’s intent is malicious, a vindictive visual assault on non-Jews who are otherwise victims of an apartheid Israel, or are continually subject to military violence, as is the case in Gaza.

It is important to differentiate these two strains of political graffiti: while graffiti can promote equality and liberty, it can also counter these values. Once a haven for the oppressed, founded on socialist values, Israel has become an oppressor. Price Tag is a plague of hate, radicalized by twisted Zionism, and ruthless settler politics. “Faithless Jews who don’t fear God can call me a terrorist if they want,” said Price Tagger Moriah Goldberg. “I don’t care what they say about me. I only care what God thinks. I act for him and him alone.”

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [Adrian Fine via Flickr]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Political Graffiti as a Catalyst for Escalating Israeli-Palestinian Violence appeared first on Law Street.

“It’s in the nature of graffiti that it can’t be contained by any established institution, commercial or educational. As a site-specific art form, it dies when separated from the where and when of its creation. Also, its energy comes from the artist’s self-identification as an aesthetic and social outlaw.“

-Ken Johnson, New York Times

Martin Wong came to New York City in 1978 as an openly gay painter and sculptor from San Francisco. He settled in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Loisadia, full of home artist communities like the Nuyorican Poets Café. Along with the South Bronx this was an epicenter street graffiti in New York during the late 1970s and 1980s. As an outsider from the West Coast, Wong was immediately spellbound by the radiant graffiti around him, passionately seeking out graffiti writers and their art around the city. In 1982, Wong began working at Pearl Paint, an art supply store on Canal Street, and would trade art supplies with graffiti writers in return for graffiti sketchbooks, drawings, and paintings. Through the 1980s, Wong amassed a colossal collection of graffiti art of 300 objects — including 50 sketchbooks, more than 100 canvases, and more than 150 works on paper. Artists range from the well-known art stars such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring to graffiti writers such as Christopher “DAZE” Ellis, FUTURA 2000, LAII, LADY PINK, and Lee Quiñones.

In all, Wong’s collection of graffiti art is, perhaps, the largest of its kind. Wong “wanted to become the Albert Barnes of graffiti,” recalled Ellis, referring to the famous collection of Post-Impressionist and early Modern works amassed by the chemist. He was “interested in far more than collecting the artists’ works, since he became a mentor to several of them,” Sean Corcoran, the curator of prints and photographs at the Museum of the City of New York, told Art in America. “He often traded with them, sometimes selling one of his own paintings and turning around and spending all the money buying work from graffiti artists.” For a short time, Wong even operated a museum of graffiti art in a row house on Bond Street until rising real estate values forced the venue to close. When Wong was diagnosed with AIDS in 1994, he donated his entire collection to the Museum of the City of New York before he died on October 12, 1999 at the age of 53. “He could have sold off the collection piecemeal, and there were interested European buyers,” said Corcoran. “[B]ut he felt strongly that the collection should remain in New York, and he donated it wholesale to the Museum.”

Curated by Cocoran, “City as Canvas” at the Museum of the City of New York is the first exhibition of Martin Wong’s graffiti art. “The collection was never able to be seen,” said Charlie Ahearn, an early graffiti aficionado and director of the movie Wild Style. Viewers can see a wide array of artifacts from sketchbooks to graffiti painted on canvas, as well as photographs that documented the New York graffiti movement during the ’70s and ’80s. Yet underneath this vast presentation — and the pieces, especially the photographs, are stunning — lurks an unsettling suspicion. Does graffiti belong on a canvas, or in a museum?

Wild Style flyer, Courtesy of Delete via Flickr

“Graffiti is really defined as some one who writes their name in an illegal fashion on public property,” Ahearn mused before “City as Canvas” opened. During the ’70s and ’80s graffiti was a “direct response to the crumbling city,” according to urban historian L.E. Neal. For graffiti writers, tagging was political; it was an “act of defiance.” Graffiti was an act of appropriation, making the city one’s own by claiming the space, says RxArt. Amid the destruction of communities, and the failure of the government to protect working-class communities in urban crisis, the graffiti movement was a “fight for space.” Removed from the street, the graffiti aesthetic on canvas is devoid of political meaning, it is an inauthentic representation of street politics, though it might present sentimental value to viewers who can remember New York City during that time.

One canvas graffiti piece illustrates this point for the entire collection. Lee Quiñones’ “Howard the Duck” (1988) is an oil on canvas reproduction of a street mural, originally produced in the early 1980s. It depicts a cartoon duck, in suit and tie, shielding himself with a garbage lid from Lee’s tag emblazoned on a brick wall. Above the scene a message reads in graffiti script: “Graffiti is art and if art is a crime, let go forgive all.” While the colors are vivid, and the message provoking, the piece would have been more poignant, and interesting if it was presented as graffiti mural on the street, as originally intended. On canvas, however, the piece is unengaging. “[T]oday that work doesn’t interest me aesthetically in the same way it might have interested writers or just art fans back in the early 1980s” said R.J. Rushmore, a young contemporary graffiti artist, and editor-in-chief of Vandalog. Initially, Ahearn considered it a mistake for Wong to bequeath his collection to any institution, but now values the exhibition at MCNY because “it places the emphasis on the historical picture of [graffiti], rather than the art world context.”

Photography is, perhaps, an appropriate method of presenting graffiti because it captures its urban context. The New York graffiti subculture was an insular world during the 1970s; the writers depended on their anonymity to continue their work while police crackdowns intensified. As a result, the graffiti writers let few outsiders into their lives, among those were photographers Henry Chalfant, Martha Cooper, Jon Naar, and Ahearn, a cinematographer. “City as Canvas” presents a section of their photographs that candidly capture the graffiti subculture with raw passion. One photo, taken by Naar, depicts a gang of writers in a graffiti-festooned subway entrance, proudly holding papers marked with their respective tags. An iconic Cooper photograph dramatically portrays a graffiti writer at work straddling the gap between two subway trains, one foot on either train. These photos, along with the sketchbooks, in my mind, are the real gems in “City as Canvas.”

“I think we’re in the right window to look at what these kids were doing and [the] effects on culture,” said Corcoran. “For us, this show is partly about how graffiti originated in New York and became a global phenomenon…Thanks to photographers like Martha Cooper and filmmakers like Charlie Ahearn, it was disseminated worldwide. The materials in the show say a lot about what New York looked like in the 1970s and 80s.”

“It’s all over the world,” Corcoran told the New York Times, ”You have kids in Europe painting trains because of what they saw in ‘Wild Style.’” Moreover, “City as Canvas” holds particular relevance today; after Banksy’s month-long “residency,” the destruction of 5 Pointz and the subsequent surge in illicit graffiti over the course of the last six months, graffiti is once again a poignant and divisive issue in New York.

“City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection” is on view through September 1, 2014 at the Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue New York, NY, 10029.

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Feature image courtesy of [Igal Malis via Flickr]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post ‘City as Art’ Exhibition Brings Massive Graffiti Collection to the Public for First Time appeared first on Law Street.

Currently on view at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery, “Energy That is All Around: Mission School,” features a group of subversive San Francisco street artists from the late-1990s. Emanating from San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), the Mission School was a direct reaction to gentrification in the Bay Area spurred by the dot-com boom that brought an influx of young professionals, upscale boutiques, restaurants, inflated rents, and threats of eviction to the primarily working-class Latino families of San Francisco’s Mission District.

“A lot of people were displaced,” said artist Chris Johnson, “everybody got fucked over.” The art of the Mission School focused on the social, political, cultural and economic aspects of everyday life in the Bay Area during this period, embodying a radical activism railing against gentrification and rampant consumerism. “They were part of a community that responded acidly to the social and aesthetic values associated with ’80s consumer culture and corporate hegemony in the dawning of the age of the internet,” said Natasha Boas, a San Francisco-based independent curator. “With their raw, immediate, and gritty street and studio practices, these post-punk, key artists of the Mission School would soon [become] international icons for new generations of art students and makers.”

The artists — Chris Johanson, Margaret Kilgallen, Alicia McCarthy, Barry McGee, Ruby Neri — share a similar aesthetic, described by McCarthy as “urban decay,” “graffiti-based,” and “Do-it-yourself.” The art is informed by lowbrow visual culture including cartoons, billboard advertisements, graffiti, and folk art. According to Lynn Gumpert, director of NYU’s Grey Art Gallery, the artworks critique society “literally standing our culture’s notion of ‘high art’ on its head.” Often employing found objects and dumpster diving for materials, their art is bound by an “anti-establishment” and “anti-capitalist” ethos, according to art critic and curator Dian Pugh whose essay ”Off The Tracks: Ethics and Aesthetics of Recent San Francisco Art” is featured in the exhibit catalogue. “Juxtaposed against the dot-com boom culture, these artists represented the moral and political voice of our cultural community — a community that was being threatened by gentrification.”

Like a modern-day John Sloan or George Bellows, Chris Johanson refers to his art as “documentary painting;” streetscapes chronicling everyday life at the dawn of the digital age. The Survivalists (1999) is a jarring installation among the pieces in the show. Flimsy wooden beams painted yellow protrude from panels on the wall, forming catwalks on which lonely consumers push shopping carts toward the viewer, perhaps conveying the alienation of labor in capitalist society. Speech bubbles from multiple figures in the panels read: “Get out of the Mission,” “Yuppies Out Now,” “Turn the building into condos,” “For Sale: Cozy One Bedroom Basement Condo, $300,000,” “Theres [sic.] no place to stay…keep on moving.”  As a whole, the scene is too much to take in at once; only after reading each panel does the larger picture come into focus. “When people see this piece, they see the social anxiety,” said Chris Johanson. “I wanted to share the complexities of the socio-economic situation that everyone just had to deal with.” Voices are illustrated in a cacophonous and vexing exchange. It’s a “celebration of multiplicity,” said Dina Pugh, “that earnestly comments on existential issues of human identity comprised by consumer culture.”

Graffiti is a galvanizing force in each piece of this show. Barry McGee, also known by his tag “Twist,” presents a more cartoon-inspired aesthetic than Johansen, which is nonetheless political. “Growing up I used to see a group of activists, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), who would spray-paint aggressive statements on Bank of America, government buildings, and freeway underpasses,” McGee recalled in a 2004 interview. “They shed light on atrocities being committed by the Reagan Administration’s policies in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba and so on. I like that — the rawness of it.” McGee’s squat, droopy-eyed cartoon and seemingly depressed cartoon figures reflect the underside of inequitable urban change; not only the exasperated slaving masses, but also perhaps homeless, downtrodden vagabonds.

At Grey Art Gallery, the first East Coast venue to showcase the Mission School, this show is not only historically significant; it’s also relevant, according to Hi-Fructose citing “siliconvalleyization” of the Bay Area. Yet what is so striking is that the same process is currently taking place in New York City; rapid gentrification, from the city center to the periphery. Looking at the Mission District of the late-1990s, one cannot help but think of Bushwick, Brooklyn today. Both neighborhoods were inhabited by primarily working-class Latino families who, over time, have been priced out of their homes; factory buildings have been converted into artists’ lofts, and bodegas have become high-end boutiques. Public art can exacerbate the rate of gentrification, transforming working-class communities into trendy neighborhoods to which hipsters flock. But it has the potential to counter this affect as well, as Art Practical mentioned in its review of the NYU show, “there are still lessons to be learned here.”

According to Barry McGee, the landscape of contemporary public art is politically benign. “The stuff people do now doesn’t antagonize anyone at all. It has become like the mural art, which is fine in its own right but doesn’t anger people when they see it…[T]here was a time in graffiti when it was fun to do images. In hindsight, it opened the floodgates to tons of terrible art school graffiti and non-abrasive images.” McGee now advocates illicit “fundamental graffiti acts” such as tags and throw-ups, which, precisely because of their illegality, have the potential to affect social change. In such a way, the Mission School teaches us to produce graffiti as a “social practice” based on “radical pessimism” about the social environment.

The takeaway message from “Energy That is All Around: Mission School” is that art not only documents, but also has the potential it change society. And that power is open to the people.

You can see the exhibit “Energy That is All Around: Mission School” featuring artwork by Chris Johanson, Margaret Kilgallen, Alicia McCarthy, Barry McGee, and Ruby Neri at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, New York, NY 10003. The exhibit is open until July 13, 2014.

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [victorgrigas via wikipedia] 

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Subversive San Francisco Street Art on Display at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery appeared first on Law Street.

“According to the mural, soccer is the opium of the masses, the bread and circuses of today’s Brazil: let them eat football!”
-The Guardian

On Thursday, June 12, 2014 police clad in riot gear and wielding clubs fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and noise bombs into crowds of protesters in São Paulo, about 10 km away from the Corinthians arena where the first game of the 2014 FIFA World Cup took place. Six people were injured, and three protesters arrested. This is only a sample of the protests surrounding the soccer tournament over the past year. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, the country’s first female leader of the so-called Workers’ Party, has subsequently deployed 100,000 police and 57,000 military to guard stadiums, teams’ hotels, and training grounds for the duration of the World Cup.

Such incendiary scenes of social protest in Brazil might conjure images of France in 1789 at the eve of revolution. Parallels abound: the people demand basic services in a grossly unequal society, and their government responds flippantly with gestures of added luxury for the wealthy; ‘Let them Eat Football.’ Brazil hosts the FIFA World Cup at an estimated cost of $11.5 billion in preparations, dolled out from public coffers, not to mention the lives of eight workers who died while constructing grandiose stadiums across the country. The expenditures for the most expensive World Cup in history are well documented (here, here and here) as are the nefarious practices of FIFA (here and here); an additional $12 billion is being spent on projects to host the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio De Janeiro. Meanwhile, the Brazilian people lack basic healthcare services, affordable public transportation and education, adequate housing and security, while suffering from trenchant institutionalized racial and economic discrimination.

According to President Rousseff, anti-FIFA demonstrations across the county are part of a “systemic campaign” against the Brazilian government, yet protesters do not see their plight as one isolated to the country. “The crisis is worldwide,” an anonymous member of the Brazilian anarchist Black Bloc group told the Global Post. “People are seeing that representative democracy doesn’t represent anyone — here in Brazil, in London, in Greece or anywhere.” And political graffiti is the undercurrent of this global cacophony of dissent.

Graffiti that reads “FIFA go home” or “Fuck the World Cup” have appeared on walls from São Paul to Rio De Janeiro, distilling the disdain of the Brazilian people into iconic slogans that they repeat during protests. Murals that celebrate the World Cup have been vandalized; a mural in Rio de Janeiro depicting Neymar da Silva Santos was painted over so the figure wore a hood used iconically by the anarchist Black Bloc. The most pervasive political graffiti, however, are murals that explicitly illustrate the concerns of protesters: One piece by Brazilian artist Cranio depicts a man flushing money down the toilet bowl; in another, the 2014 World Cup mascot points a rifle at a message that reads, ‘We Want Education’ and ‘Not Repression’. Protests iterated at demonstrations physically are thus represented on walls throughout the country.

“People already have the feeling and that image condensed this feeling,” São Paulo-based graffiti artist Paulo Ito told Slate in May when photos of his mural in Rio de Janeiro began circulating through social media. The piece shows a weeping, emaciated Brazilian boy, fork and knife in hand, being served a football on a silver plate. “The message of this painting is powerful,” the Guardian interpreted. “Amid the sporting hysteria, poverty not only goes on, but the lives of the marginalized have arguably been made worse.” The image has since gone viral accumulating 3,310 likes and 4,749 shares on Ito’s Facebook account alone; on the popular Facebook page TV Revolta it has been shared and liked more than 40,000 times. Graffiti is a “good way to expose the country’s problems,” Paulo Ito explained. “If the government doesn’t want to expose these things it’s because they feel ashamed. If they feel ashamed by this they might take it more seriously – at least, that’s our intention.”

Artists B. Shanti and A. Signl of Captain Broderline, an international graffiti collective that was outlawed in Egypt last year, share this aim, producing their own political art in Brazil. “We just want to support the people on the street and give them like a voice that when all the people come here and look at the nice World Cup they also see the resistance movement.” Their mural, organized with Amnesty International Brazil, stands across from a police headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, displaying construction shovels attached to a giant soccer ball demolishing favelas along a regal red carpet — it is dedicated to all Brazilians evicted during the preparations of the World Cup.

But can such graffiti be harbingers of revolution? “Look at these images from far enough back – from the point of view of world television, with its cameras aimed at the football pitch – and they become a sideshow to the spectacle in the stadiums,” said Jonathon Jones in the Guardian. “But perhaps this is one of those moments when the images break open, the dreams and nightmares of society spill from fantasy into reality, and the hungry kid gets fed. In that case, these paintings will become icons of a revolution started by sport. It is, however, more likely they are simply adding a bit of a sting to the usual, overfamiliar opiate.” In the case of Brazil, we cannot hold up graffiti’s illegality as an indication of its political effectiveness. Graffiti has been legal in Rio de Janeiro since 2009, when the Brazilian government passed Law 706/07; today, artists can mark public buildings, including columns, walls, and construction siding, as well as private property if done with the consent of the owners. As compared to Egypt, where the government has banned political graffiti, Brazil has a relatively liberal policy regarding street art, and why not? — public art has been statistically proven to increase the value of real estate.

There is, however, definite political meaning in the graffiti critiquing the government and the World Cup; and what is more significant, in my opinion, is the solidarity that this graffiti has given to the disparate protests in Brazil. All voices rally behind the slogans echoed by the graffiti in the street — eg, “FIFA go home.” The inclusion of international graffiti collectives like Captain Borderline, moreover, aligns Brazilian dissidents with those around the world. Allusions to the French Revolution are not overstated. “When people go on the street and create pressure they become political actors,” said an anonymous Brazilian anarchist, this “new generation is very radical.” And graffiti plays a fundamental role in making it so.

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [Jordi Bernabeu Farrus via Flickr]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post World Cup Brazil: ‘Let Them Eat Football!’ appeared first on Law Street.

This weekend marked the eighth annual Bushwick Open Studios (BOS), a local arts festival in Brooklyn, NY. BOS has become an annual summer festival, growing in size and intensity since volunteers formed Arts in Bushwick, a non-hierarchical council of artists and community members in 2007. The event now encompasses five districts (nearly 600 venues), featuring open air concerts, food trucks, and even community garden initiatives. According to Arts in Bushwick, BOS has become “one of the largest open studio events in the world,” which I am nearly inclined to believe.

Last summer was my first Open Studios experience, and while I was not wholly impressed with the art, I was overwhelmed by the event as a community-oriented phenomenon. BOS 2013 coincided with numerous local block parties, hosted by working-class Hispanic families who welcomed me with free food and drink; it was an altogether heartwarming experience. This year, while there very well may have been neighborhood block parties, BOS was much different. I surveyed the scene on Sunday, accompanied by my partner, Amy Lucker, an art librarian, and Lee Mandel, the founding manager of Boswyck Farms, an urban farm based in Bushwick. Amy and Lee, who both served on the inaugural Arts in Bushwick council in 2007, were astounded by how large BOS had grown. “Can you believe this is Troutman Street?” Lee asked rhetorically as we navigated through the crowds of spectators, painted burlesque dancers on stilts, food vendors, and blaring concert stages. “When I moved here, this was a street you did not walk down alone.” We continued down St. Nicholas Avenue, stopping to notice a restaurant that opened that week on a site that was once a car dealership and mechanic warehouse. Bushwick is changing rapidly, we concurred; even I, who was new to the area, recognized the new boutiques, galleries, restaurants, cafes, and bars opening in the neighborhood.

It is no secret that the incursion of the “creative class” spurs gentrification. Since Lee moved to Bushwick in 2006, rent has almost tripled. Ten years ago, a two-bedroom apartment priced at $1,100 a month would have been expensive in Bushwick, according to Diana Reyna, who represented the 34th District (Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Ridgewood) on the New York City Council from 2001 to 2013. “Today we’re talking about people who are charging $3,000.” In 2011 alone, the average monthly rent for a studio apartment in Bushwick increased 27 percent, according to MNS, a residential and investment sales brokerage. Average monthly rents for one- and two-bedroom apartments have also increased commensurately. With the exponential rise in rent and cost of living it is becoming more and more difficult for working-class communities to raise families in Bushwick; it is no wonder then that I could not find bock parties at BOS 2014 as I did the year before. What is more concerning, though, is that from 2000 to 2010, the number of white residents in Bushwick has nearly doubled. “There is a lot of anxiety about the pace at which Bushwick is changing,” said Deborah Brown, an artist who served on the local community board in 2013. “It’s been faster than I could imagine.”

Beneath the surface of BOS 2014 — or rather on the surface— however, a voice of opposition raged. We noticed stenciled tags on the sidewalks throughout Bushwick, messages that critiqued the gentrification of the area.

Courtesy of Ryan Purcell

Courtesy of Ryan Purcell

The tags were strategically placed: two tags read “Build Community Not Condos” outside of a newly renovated apartment building and next to a low-income housing unit along Maria Hernandez Park; “increase in minimum wage = increase in living wage” outside a new health foods store.

Courtesy of Ryan Purcell

Courtesy of Ryan Purcell

The tags were targeted at specific indicators of gentrification, like new cafés, restaurants, and luxury apartment buildings, and the messages seem to have come from victims of gentrification. “Which is more criminal,” asked Lee, “these illegal tags, or the trash next to them on the sidewalk?” Amid Bushwick Open Studios these subversive tags challenge culture authority, asking tersely “Art For Whom?”

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [Ryan D. Purcell].

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post ‘Art for Whom?’: Bushwick Open Studios 2014 appeared first on Law Street.

“I have a confession to make,” Patti Smith said on a dimly lit stage, “I am Banksy.”

On May 19 2014, the ‘godmother’ of punk rock presented the Webby Award Person of the Year to Banksy, the street artist, activist, and all around prankster, who in October 2013 took New York by force in a month-long residency engaging the city with tags and stunts. The eighteenth annual ceremony took place at Cipriani Wall Street (once home to the New York Stock Exchange, and headquarters to the National City Bank), celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Internet, honoring “excellence on the internet” – a distinction that becomes evermore dubious in America post net-neutrality. The elusive street artist did not make an appearance of course, but he did issue a video response summarizing his month in New York. In October 2013, the video begins, Banksy became New York City’s Artist in Residence, “an honor so prestigious he made it up and awarded it to himself.”

The month-long tour began October 1, 2013 when the artist vowed to produce a new piece of work every day somewhere in the city. Banksy’s website named the residency “Better Out Than In,” which, as Roberta Smith of the New York Times pointed out, “may seem to elevate the streets and the outsider artist above insiders and their pristine galleries, but it is also a crude British version of ‘gesundheit,’ except for expulsions other than sneezes.” The name evokes the playfulness of Banksy’s aesthetic, which he sometimes uses to convey stark political messages. “This British graffiti artist, purported millionaire, activist, filmmaker and prankster spent the last month roaming the city,” Smith continued, “perpetuating what is — depending upon your point of view — street art, political resistance or vandalism.” Banksy’s art was a social experiment, “using the city as a rat maze into which he dropped different kinds of bait to see how New Yorkers would react.”

What type of political graffiti? For starters, “The Sirens of the Lambs,” was an obvious critique of the meat processing industry; the piece consisted of a delivery truck overflowing with adorable animated heads of sheep and cows, screeching to the public on their way to the slaughterhouse — appropriately driving through Manhattan’s Meat Packing District.

carnegenyc via Flickr

On October 4, the artist made a traditional spay-paint tag in Bushwick, “OCCUPY! The Musical;” another tag he produced on October 23 read, “Today’s art has been cancelled due to police activity.” On October 16, Banksy staged a performance piece where a dirty young man shined the shoes of a Ronald McDonald statue, which frowned down at the wastrel. The piece critiqued the low wages in the fast food industry, and even drew complaints from the passersby for the working rights of the performer.

the cardinal de la ville via Wikipedia

My favorite piece, however, was a stall that Banksy set up selling original artworks. The art would have totaled half a million dollars; however, “without any of the art hype,” Banky’s recent video explains, “the results — a total take of $420.”

If Banksy’s residency was a series of “social experiments” as Roberta Smith interpreted, what do they tell us about New York — about America? Banksy points out obvious yet controversial social issues such as the ethics of animal slaughterhouses, and wage-slavery of fast food service, but he does so with subtle ironic playfulness, making his art appealing to a popular audience. Banksy invites public interaction, and in doing som discussion of the issues he presents, which I think is the prime value of his dada-esque confluence of political prank and art. The public responded resoundingly to Bansky’s New York odyssey; in October 350,000 people followed Banksy’s Instagram account and spread photos of his art further on Foursquare, Tumblr, Vine, YouTube, and Twitter, where #banksy was used more than 38,000 times during the month. Ultimately, Banksy has demonstrated how social media influences our daily lives, shaping social and political discussions; he presents the intrinsic value of public space, both physical and virtual, as a space for political and social dialogue. As transnational private wealth continues to conquer the public sphere, Banksy ever more so stands out as a beacon of public resistance.

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [Infrogmation via Wikipedia]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post What did we Learn from Banksy? appeared first on Law Street.