Concrete Canvas (II)

Working with a rough canvas takes on a whole new meaning in Palermo. Anywhere to make your mark will do.

A search on Google for why people paint graffiti provides several ideas, but no reports of formal research. Reasons for it must vary enormously. A simple tag, like that photographed here, proclaims the identity of the ‘artist’, but also the safety of anonymity to rant. I guess it’s just one of the ways young people find to proclaim their identity and, in some sense, their ‘ownership’ of their urban hood. Some of it is done by teams, so a social need to belong to a (somewhat clandestine?) club will be satisfying, and will be continually reinforced by the visibility of their collective work. Most of us live and work in urban spaces, so from a political advocacy perspective, the walls become effective billboards that potentially garner a lot of ‘views’. Invention of the spray-can allowed writers to become artists (think Banksy). Some graffiti is undoubtedly clever or an ironic expressions of humanity and environment – a type of art meme (think Banksy again).

But to me graffiti triggers more thoughts of bogans than of Banksy … and of boredom (theirs and my own) when confronted by saturation paint bombing of Europe’s lived-in places.