Suppression passed off as vandalism

A 40 ft long and 8 ft high structure with crocheted yarn was installed in one of the homeless shelters in New Delhi in 2015 by New York – based Polish street artist Agata Oleksiak along with local volunteers as a part of ‘Rain Basera’ project to raise awareness about the lives of those living in the shelters

Activists like California-based Nancypili Hernandez use Street Art as a crucial tool in telling suppressed stories. Creating and directing many different murals, working in San Francisco’s Latinx community to “document people’s history that isn’t told in the history books,” it’s her work in the Mission District that highlights the struggles of the Latinx residents, amplifying the stories of a native community passed over by San Francisco’s tour guides.

In 2015, Polish street artist based in New York Agata Oleksiak aka Olek arrived in New Delhi in 2015 to work on a massive project and used the technique of crocheting to give expression to everyday occurrences and inspirations; her artwork often examines sexuality, feminist ideas and the evolution of communication. She visually transformed one of the 184 homeless shelters in New Delhi, to raise awareness about the lives of the desperate people who live in them. Covering the entire 40 feet long and 8 feet high structure with crocheted yarn with a team of local volunteers, she worked for seven days to put together the entire installation that was part of the ‘Rain Basera’ project. 

Dressing up a charging bull, at night

Why, on Christmas Eve, she even cloaked the iconic “Charging Bull” statue on Wall Street – from horn to hoof – with a pink, camouflage-patterned cover that she crocheted herself. It took her miles of yarn to create the fabric over ‘Six seasons of Lost as she puts it. While she kept waiting for the police to stop her, they didn’t. “They were human and understood that I didn’t want to harm the statue,” but the installation lasted for merely two hours as ‘a grumpy city workers tore it down’.

Generally, street art is quickly dismissed as ‘vandalism’ and an illegal activity when not in private galleries or sponsored by non-profits. Those opposing street art keep telling artists they should resort to “legal” methods of art in the privacy of their homes, while starkly ignoring the glaring fact that the high-end art world is discriminatory. 

Opponents say ‘stay legal, display in private’

Keep America Beautiful (KAB), a large non-profit with corporate sponsors like H&M, PepsiCo, and McDonalds, began a programme in 2007 called Graffiti Hurts. They even offer grants upwards of $2,000 to local governments and police departments for fighting street art. Their slogan? “We keep America beautiful so Americans can do beautiful things.” Now, the non-profit is conveniently silent on which Americans are given the right to create those “beautiful things?” And at whose expense?

KAB maintains that while graffiti vandals believe their actions harm no one, “graffiti hurts everyone—homeowners, communities, businesses, schools, and you.” They maintain, those who practice it risk personal injury, violence, and arrest. The prime difference between Graffiti and Art is…Permission. 

Over the summer of 2020, a portrait recurred on city walls across the world: an image of the black American George Floyd, who was brutally suffocated to death by police officer David Chauvin on 25 May 2020. Most of these portraits were based on Floyd’s 2016 selfie, taken from his own Facebook account; many referred to the torment of his killing, and his final words. 

Support to Floyd From Pakistan, India

Thousands of miles from the US protests, numerous graffiti tributes to Floyd appeared in European cities and in Asia, Africa and Australia. In what transcended borders, even bridged differences between two sworn enemies was Karachi-based truck artist Haider Ali’s portrait of Floyd inscribed with English tags (‘#blacklivesmatter’) and song lyrics ‘Goron ki na Kalon ki, Duniya Hai Dilwalon ki‘ meaning the World does not belong to the Whites or Blacks but to those with hearts. Interestingly the Pakistani artist has used lyrics from a film song whose lyrics were penned by Indian lyricist Anjaan for a 1982 film Disco Dancer and sung by Suresh Wadkar and Usha Mangeshkar. 

The truck artist’s brilliant blending of George Floyd’s portrait tackling the issue of colour and hate in the USA with neighbouring India’s legendary love-hate with Pakistan was amazing.

The very public horror of Floyd’s killing (captured on videocam) lingers in recent memory but his isn’t a case in isolation. Memorials also say the names of generations of innocent black US victims: among them, Breonna Taylor (killed by the police in her own home, 13 March, 2020); 12-year-old Tamir Rice (fatally shot by the police, 22 November, 2014); 14-year-old Emmett Till (lynched by racists, 28 August, 1955) and more.

Testament to protestors’ collective voice

Through graffiti, evidently unauthorised, illegal and without permission, brings to focus, international artists find their own resonance like accusations of police brutality in Kenya. Political graffiti is a critical intervention in urban space, particularly so as municipalities and police attempt to shut down the streets and the sounds of protests. For long, even after protests have dispersed, graffiti stands as a testament to the protestors’ collective voice. 

That the Black Lives Matter movement has transgressed beyond borders is evident in the works of contemporary artists who continue to embody its energy. The works of London-based Ghanian Street Artist and educator Dreph (aka Neequaye Dsane) appearing around the world, including residencies in Brazil and Cape Verde, says, “We are bombarded with negative imagery all day long; what do we do with that energy? It’s got to be moulded into something positive… I want to constantly make authentic, inspiring, meaningful, thought-provoking work, regardless of the context.”

In Britain, his street-portrait series includes Migrations, a celebration of multi-cultural local heroes – especially resonant around the Windrush scandal, where hundreds of Britons of Caribbean descent were wrongly threatened with deportation and refused vital services through the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy. 

Dreph sums it up when he says, he can go pretty much to any country in the world and meet a local within minutes because of the graffiti movement. It’s a network. 

Born in 1961 in Larache, a harbour town in northern Morocco, Dreph’s father emigrated to England in the 60s, so he spent his formative years with his mother, auntie, grandma and sisters. 

He moved to North London in 1973 when he was 12 to join his father. He recalls it as being a tough time, where he was unable to speak English and was immersed in a new culture, in a time where London wasn’t as cosmopolitan as it is today.

Free art elbows compulsions of commerce

In Brixton, a sizeable chunk of the 30-foot-tall Michelle Obama mural remains painted over as Dorrell Place becomes the place for graffiti artists/taggers/scrawlers to showcase their works of art. 

The homage to the former First Lady of the United States that first appeared on the side of the Marks & Spencer store in October 2018 was the creation of Dreph who made the advert in collaboration with Penguin Random House to promote the publication of Obama’s autobiography ‘Becoming,’ released on 13 November, 2018.

Yet, by February 2021 the bottom half was painted over, and in the last couple of years the rest of the mural has dwindled to naught, almost symbolising the triumph of free art over commerce.

One of Dreph’s latest murals depicts Hassan Hajjaj who joined the burgeoning west London immigrant community. He felt very much a foreigner and many of the people he befriended were people who had had a similar journey and shared experiences of being the outsider. In this period, he made a lot of friends, many from the Caribbean, India and Pakistan, and says that they stuck together and looked after one another.