Spain’s Graffiti Phenomenon

Spain is known for the street art that decorates major cities and towns all over the country, with multiple Spanish street artists reaching global acclaim. The street art phenomenon is especially significant not only for the identity it gives to Spain, but also for its relation to contemporary culture and expression. 

Graffiti in Alicante, Spain. Photo by Ralph (Ravi) Kayden.

Mural in Madrid, Spain. Photo by Nancy O'Connor.

When walking the streets of Valencia, Spain, nowhere is the graffiti more prolific than Barrio Carmen, the historic district of Valencia. Tall buildings along winding stone alleys are adorned with color: depicting abstract images, portraits, and scenery reminiscent to that of the artists of the Escuela de Bellas Artes. Property owners often commission artists to decorate the entrance to their buildings, establishing a connection to the culture of artistic exhibition that exists within the city. Valencia is just one home to the countless networks of street artists across Spain: graffiti peppers the streets and surfaces of major cities, villages, and neighborhoods alike across the nation. 

In Barcelona and Madrid, the real graffiti phenomenon exists not in the streets, but underground: along the sides of metro cars. Given the costs of cleaning and repairing painted cars, this form of graffiti is revered as the most risky, and the most thrilling. Barcelona has begun to heighten its police presence in the metros to prevent vandalism, but this measure has only served to make the artists more crafty. Rappelling through vents, jumping fences, and running from the police have become commonplace in the laundry list of a street artist’s activities. 

Saville Street, Saville, Spain. Photo by Look Up Look Down Photography.

The two principles that unite the diverse network of graffiti artists throughout Spain are anonymity and adventure. In this way, street art becomes an equalizing force for expression. Of the thousands of graffiti artists throughout Spain, there exists no single class or personal affiliation. From this anonymity arises solidarity; artists sometimes work in teams or paint in recognizable styles, but rarely is the actual identity of an artist public. 

Regarding adventure, José Sánchez, an anthropological researcher at Pompeu Fabra University, describes that from graffiti, artists find both a sense of belonging as well as adrenaline. There is, then, a dual impetus: to create some sort of permanence through visual expression, but also for the rush of the moment: the danger of painting in precarious situations, or of attempting to evade vandalism charges from the police. Sánchez offers the notion that the street art phenomenon arises as a microcosm for a contemporary society entrenched in immediate gratification, tactile pleasures, and hedonism, which Sánchez identifies mostly as the impact of youth culture. This explanation, however, seems to only cover part of the multifaceted nature of graffiti and its specific mode of public speech. 

Mahón, Menorca, Spain. Photo by JR Harris.

One prolific street artist from the Gijon region of Northern Spain, who goes by the moniker “Señor X,” has become widely known as “Spain’s Banksy,” in reference to the mysterious British graffiti artist who has gained significant global acclaim in recent decades. Señor X’s work is focused on social commentary: the vast majority of his murals are anti-capitalist and anti-establishment. Señor X’s dynamic portfolio represents just part of the larger body of street art created in protest. 

Furthermore, the debate over graffiti as street art versus graffiti as vandalism is just one feature over the larger question of legitimate protest. Art and visual expression have long been means of protest: Picasso’s Guernica, one of the most renowned pieces in the Spanish canon was painted in response to the bombing of the civilians of Guernica, Spain during the Spanish Civil War. The murals of artists such as Señor X represent many of the same sentiments and involve similar artistic meticulousness, but are illegal, rather than revered. Nonetheless, street art remains an integral part of identity and expression within Spain, and furthers discussions as to the nature of protest and youth culture globally.

HALLIE GRIFFITHS

Hallie is an undergraduate at the University of Virginia studying Foreign Affairs and Spanish. After graduation, she hopes to apply her passion for travel and social action toward a career in intelligence and policy analysis. Outside of the classroom, she can be found, quite literally, outside: backpacking, rock climbing, or skiing with her friends.

‘Malaysia’s Banksy’ Brings Art Lovers—and Overtourism—to Penang

Ernest Zacharevic is a Lithuanian-born artist who made his mark creating iconic street murals on the island of Penang in Malaysia. Despite good intentions, Zacharevic’s work prompted the rise of tourist attractions that lack the soul and authenticity that made Penang a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the first place. 

 The iconic “Little Children on a Bicycle” mural in Penang. Yaopey Yong. Unsplash. 

Penang’s historical capital, George Town, was officially inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008. Since the 18th century, this Malaysian city has been a prolific hub of cultural and commercial exchange. Today, it remains a multicultural hot spot. George Town is also home to a unique layout of mixed architecture that also reflects the region’s history. From its colonial-style British office buildings to its rustic Chinese shophouses, George Town’s mismatched grid of alleyways and side streets bolsters the place’s almost stuck in time sentiment. To further enhance George Town and its diverse history, the George Town Festival was launched in 2010 as a platform for dance, theater and other regional artistic endeavors.

In the midst of this budding art movement, Lithuanian-born artist Ernest Zacharevic began to make his literal mark on the walls of George Town. As an experimentalist known by some as “Malaysia’s Banksy,” Zacharevic’s style revolves around ever-changing concepts, manifesting in his preference for outdoor art. Zacharevic’s primary interest lies in the relationship between art and the urban landscape. Consequently, he mainly flits between stencil, spray and other types of tools conducive to dynamic and public pieces.  

One of the more famous interactive pieces. Yaopey Yong. Unsplash. 

Although local pieces funded by Sculpture At Work also grace the walls of George Town, Zacharevic’s pieces are the main attraction thanks to the George Town Festival 2012 project “Mirrors George Town.” His iconic and sometimes interactive pieces like “Little Children on a Bicycle” and “Brother and Sister on a Swing” became hot-ticket items for both visitors and locals alike to experience. The open-air exhibitions became so popular that various travel blogs offered the best walking maps for viewing the murals.

“The Little Boy with Pet Dinosaur” and “Boy on a Bike” murals side by side. Travelationship. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. 

In 2013, Chairman of Penang Global Tourism Ooi Geok Ling felt that Ernest Zacharevic “captured the essence of Penang. I know he spent a lot of time here, soaking it all in when he was visiting. He could translate that into his murals.” Ling also believed that Zacharevic’s influence would also help to expand the reach of local artists and small galleries in the city. Indeed, most of Zacharevic’s pieces are reflective of the city and country’s diverse populace. Murals portray children cycling through the city, a painter attending to a pair of clogs, and even more modern scenes of phone booths and curious cats.  

Since the creation of these murals, Penang has experienced an influx of “Instagram tourists” and the subsequent boom of businesses that cater to them. The town’s soul, as the South China Morning Post wrote, has been “warped.” Before the worldwide lockdown, older buildings in George Town had begun renovating in a way that catered to foreign tastes. Cookie-cutter coffee shops, museums and art galleries began lining the centuries-old landscape, sapping away at the gritty authenticity of the once safely obscure town.

In response to this commercialization, Ernest Zacharevic made a statement on his Instagram in July 2019. He lamented, “Myself and many others blame my work for Armenian Street being a center of [the] tourist route in Penang.” He called the construction of Instagram-friendly places a “circus” and a threat to George Town’s status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Since the worldwide lockdown, however, locals have made it back into the spotlight. Though the Penang economy today is largely devoid of tourist dollars, the city is also free of the overtourism and traffic jams that congested its streets. Nikkei Asia reports that locals now have the chance to reclaim spaces that gentrification took away. Hawker stalls and other peddlers are also refocusing on the needs of residents and the smaller but more consistent business they provide. Local shopkeepers feel that the lockdown has provided the city an unexpected but much-needed reset button. In the wake of this worldwide pause, locals are starting to explore more sustainable possibilities—ones that don’t compromise the historical integrity of George Town or the well-being of its residents.

Rhiannon Koh

Rhiannon earned her B.A. in Urban Studies & Planning from UC San Diego. Her honors thesis was a speculative fiction piece exploring the aspects of surveillance technology, climate change, and the future of urbanized humanity. She is committed to expanding the stories we tell.

Street Artists Save Protest Masterpieces

Artists adorned New York City with Black Lives Matter tributes. But what becomes of graffiti when the world tries to erase it?

A mural in Minneapolis remembers George Floyd’s life. Lorie Shaull. CC BY-SA 2.0.

SoHo prepared for the worst. In the days before the election, the Manhattan neighborhood’s famed boutiques and shops barricaded their windows with plywood to protect their merchandise from looters. After a summer of uprising, one more round of rioting seemed inevitable. The wooden boards provided yet another reminder of how unlivable 2020 had become. It was as if the neighborhood shut its eyes to a reality too bleak to bear. 

Enter into this dismal cityscape the artists who first put SoHo on the map. Before high-end shops and wealthy shoppers gentrified this stylish slice of Manhattan, street artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat adorned its concrete buildings with graffiti. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, countless creatives made SoHo an international hub for artists of all stripes. Now, history comes full circle. Street artists see a rare and irresistible opportunity to take the plywood covering SoHo’s shops and create masterpieces. 

Peace, love and police abolition. iamrenny. CCO 1.0.

Among them are Konstance Patton and Trevor Croop. This past summer, Patton focused on her Goddess Project, adorning the streets with vibrant, noble portraits of Black and Indigenous women. Croop spent much of 2020 abroad, leading art workshops and reconnecting with his Lebanese heritage. Within days of his return to the U.S., the two met on the street, throwing up artwork side by side. 

Both seasoned street artists, they knew firsthand how transitory the form can be. An artist might spend hours on a painting that will be erased in a matter of days. The situation in SoHo is much more fraught. When businesses began reopening, they trashed the pieces painted on sheets of plywood. Others scrambled to grab as many panels as they could and loaded them into vans to sell to the highest bidder. 

Can’t we just get along? iamrenny. CCO 1.0.

Recognizing the inestimable value of these pieces of art, Patton and Croop founded the SoHo Renaissance Factory (SRF), which stores wooden boards bearing protest art in an empty SoHo dance studio. It consists of themselves and three fellow artists: Sule, Amir Diop and Brendan McNally. They developed an extensive network of friends, artists and security guards who alert them when a work of art is about to be trashed. They rush to the scene in an attempt to save the piece. Sometimes they arrive in the nick of time; other times they do not.

SRF member Amir Diop experienced the latter firsthand. During the protests demanding justice for the death of George Floyd, Diop painted a mural on the plywood boards covering the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) design store. It showed smiling faces circling around a black hole beneath the words “Take me to a place where Black Lives Matter.” Only days after he painted it, MoMA tore down the piece and shredded it. In the words of Diop, “They said that place doesn’t exist and they just threw it in the garbage.”

Spray their names. drburtoni. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Street artists enjoy few legal protections. The Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) of 1990 protected art from being mutilated or destroyed but only if it reached a “recognized stature.” In the digital age, this term is ambiguous. Instead of a signature, artists leave their social media handles in a painting’s corner, raising the question of whether online fame qualifies under VARA. For the time being, however, artists cannot depend on the art establishment. If the MoMA won’t recognize art, it is unlikely that a court will. 

A moment to remember. drburtoni. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

The future of the SRF is unclear, but it does look promising. The group recently struck a deal with Mana Contemporary, an arts center in New Jersey, to display the wooden boards in a public show next year when COVID-19 restrictions hopefully ease up. For now, the SRF has moved to a spacious studio in the NoMo SoHo Hotel, where it landed a residency. The new space offers a comfortable environment to create art, but the work of the SRF will always be rooted in the streets.

See the work of the SoHo Renaissance Factory on its website:

https://sohorenaissancefactory.com/

Or check out each artist’s work on their Instagram pages:

Konstance Patton - @konartstudio

Trevor Croop - @light.noise

Sule - @sulecantcook

Amir Diop - @amir.diop99

Brendan McNally - @brendantmcnally

You can also support the mission of the SoHo Renaissance Factory by getting involved with organizations that support racial justice, some of them listed below:

Black Lives Matter - https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ms_blm_homepage_2019

Color of Change - https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/support-us?refcode=coc_website_popup

SURJ - https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/donate-to-surj.html

Organizations for Black Struggle - https://www.obs-stl.org/

Project South - https://projectsouth.org/

Michael McCarthy

Michael is an undergraduate student at Haverford College, dodging the pandemic by taking a gap year. He writes in a variety of genres, and his time in high school debate renders political writing an inevitable fascination. Writing at Catalyst and the Bi-Co News, a student-run newspaper, provides an outlet for this passion. In the future, he intends to keep writing in mediums both informative and creative.