In Defense of Street Art
How street art democratizes creativity.
Late in January, I was invited to an artist-led community conversation here in Phoenix. The purpose of the event was to give “Phoenix visual artists and arts professionals a forum in which to meet, discuss, and strategize together about ways to overcome the challenges we all face in furthering our goals individually and collectively.” There were roughly ten tables, each with two facilitators who helped to move us through a set of topics.
On the whole, this was an interesting and enlightening event, so much so that it has me altering aspects of my applied project for my master’s program. We talked about ways to get artwork out of the studio, out of the gallery, out of the institutions and into the hands of the people! We discussed ways to integrate arts into movements that are already mobilizing all over this country and the world at large. We mused on the way pop-up, guerrilla exhibitions could catalyze conversations and force dialogue that we need to have right now, which often isn’t possible with institutions that have their shows planned years in advance or that are beholden to boards and donors.
Towards the end of an otherwise inspiring evening, I was troubled by a comment made by a well-known architect, who has contributed fantastic works to the Phoenix community, and who will undoubtedly contribute more. He said that he was tired of businesses coming into Phoenix, slapping a shitty mural on the side of the building, and calling it “art.” I heard this, and I bristled. For almost a year now, I’ve been mapping murals in the Phoenix area. I have mapped about 100 and that’s not all of them. When I heard the criticism, I regrettably didn’t say anything, partially because I was in a new space I was still navigating and partially because I didn’t know if my response was primarily out of personal offense. But it has not stopped bothering me.
When Art Hits the Streets
We city dwellers are surrounded by miles of concrete canvas, poking up out of the earth like the fossilized teeth of some long dead giant. We are literally in the thick of blank pages waiting for words, and we write our human narrative all over our urban centers. We spray our voices onto the walls, staking a claim and reinforcing our identities as the people who comprise a community. So much of our art and culture is stored in museum collections, hidden from view, and sometimes only accessible to people who can afford to visit it. If art belongs to humanity, then there is no greater art of the people than the art that lives in the city among them, that breathes the air, that fades and wears with every passing season like the very people who dwell there.
Street art is also reclamation. Of space. Of gentrified neighborhoods. Of histories washed over by colonialism or war or natural disasters. We dig up ancient cities and study their buried structures to learn about the people who once were, because their artifacts are marked by their narratives, and sometimes their narratives look similar to our own. And while the architecture itself is culturally significant, so is what’s painted, carved, or plastered on its walls. Today, street art is and has been a form of social activism and protest. It is the face of the marginalized, of the disenfranchised, of the dissenters. Sometimes its dissent is merely in its resistance to be defined at all, in its free expression and creative play, and in the liberation of imagination.
Street Art as Activism
Artists today have already been mobilizing around larger cultural conversations as they frequently do in times of crisis. For example, “Nasty Women” art exhibitions popped up all over the country (including Phoenix) in support of Planned Parenthood and in response to calls for the defunding of women’s health initiatives and access to healthcare. There have been other powerful representations of street art in Ferguson, Missouri in response to police brutality against the black community. Artists are even designing the faces of the current resistance that protesters literally take to the streets in protest.
Street Art has a way of democratizing creativity and artistic expression in ways that traditional art does not. This is not to say that the art historical canon and its precedents do not have their place in our cultural collective. They certainly do contribute to our human heritage in immeasurable ways, but the elitist view that this kind of high culture is the only bastion upon which all humanity rests is, quite frankly, dishonest and overly narrow. As necessary as I believe it is to human expression and creativity, art (and art-making) is a privilege. Street Art invites participation in ways that are not always possible in institutions.
So, I deny this idea that murals are inherently “shitty” or the suggestion that street art is low culture. When a marginalized group sees faces that look like them displayed prominently in their neighborhood, this gives them voice and representation on public view. If two people stand in front of a mural and begin to articulate what they like and do not like, what speaks to them, and what informs their opinion of the piece, they are engaging in valuable critical thinking exercises they may not otherwise get in traditional contexts. If murals enliven a public park and encourage residents to get outside, get moving, and get to know their neighbors, this creates healthier, more cohesive communities.
In Summer 2014 when I was in Iceland, the singer/songwriter Svavar Knutur visited my class to talk about Icelandic culture. He said something in response to conservative ideologies that “foreigners” threaten the culture of a place, and what he said returns to me over and over again: “Nobody can take your culture from you. Culture is what you make. If you feel your culture is threatened, contribute to it.” We get to decide our own story. So, keep writing your narratives all over this city. It belongs to all of us.
