Graffiti City

Nigerian-German School, Apapa

The Cape Town Journal 2

For someone whose interest in graffiti (or graphiti if you like) had been long undernourished by the few pieces encountered in Lagos like that long wall you see at Igbosere while riding from CMS to Obalende (is it still there?) and the hidden wall bordering the football field at the Nigerian - German School at Beach Land Estate in Apapa, ariving at Cape Town to see a city richly embazoned in tags (stylised signatures), pieces (large colourful images with 3D effects), throwups (large tags with outline and fill colours), top-to-bottoms (pieces that cover the entire height of railway cars), bombs (paintings that cover many surfaces), burners (large and elaborate pieces) and insides (tags or bombs done inside trains, or buses) was like hitting a state of nirvana, where street walls, factory buildings, trains and fences bore testament to the creative energies of young people. But when excited enquiries as to how to engage some of the proponents of the street art are met with embarassed -are you serious?- sort of stares, you drop from cloud nine and confront the vandalism component of the art form which makes most of its audience wince with discomfort- train stations, railway / street signs and the trains especially are tagged and bombed illegally, and often times, maliciously.

can2 (courtesy www.hiphop.co.za)

Graphiti grew into contemporary consciousness, according to Wikipedia as the fourth component of the hip hop (youth) culture, the other three being rap music, break dancing and disk jockeying. But the act of scratching inscriptions and illustrations on walls has been traced as far back as ancient Rome and even the Egyptian hieroglyphics that adorned ancient Egyptian temples and palaces can be deemed as precursors to the modern and diverse forms of graphiti which are now widespread. Being a youthful preoccupation with vandalism rooted in its history has helped taint the art form as yet another manifestation of juvenile delinquency, what with individual property owners, private enterprises and government agencies expending huge sums to repeatedly remove offending tags, pieces and other exotic species of graphiti that continuosly deface the public space.

However, thankfully, like rap music, graphiti is not just about juvenile delinquency. There is a strong art content and an even stronger social consciousness running between the lines that delineate the textual and illustrative motiffs within its make up. While design has evolved a trend called critical design that puts more demand on designers to be sociopolitically relevant and the boundary between designers and artists is getting thinner with more design pieces approaching terrains traditionally and thematically reserved for the visual arts and vice versa (in the esoteric realm of art installations), graffiti has for the past few decades been at the forefront of that meeting of the two immense frontiers of art and design and had begun finding acceptance in mainstream art circles especially in the United States and in Europe since the late 1980s. An artist like the UK based Banksy for example has assumed a legendary status for his socio-political satires (a mural depicting a hole through the Isreali-Palestinian wall with a tropical paradise on the other side), witty remarks about pulp fiction (literaly, his mural of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson holding banana pistols) and subversive art interventions (creating witty mock-up of well known art works and sneaking them into museums to mount beside originals) fueled further by his hidden identity even as he publishes books and holds exhibitions on his works. The genre has spawned off competitions, exhibitions, workshops and other events and its exponents have continuosly courted and won the support (in some cases) of government agencies and private enterprises in using the art form as a tool for positively engaging the youth by giving them a (legal) platform through organised events and competitions for expressing their joys, pains frustrations and general world views.

sky1, seesmo & weels (courtesy www.hiphop.co.za)

While South Africa struggles to live down the embarrasing throw up (no pun intended) of xenophobic violence that has swept through some of the nation's townships in a complicated reaction to built up political and socio-economic pressures, traces of the frustrations being felt by the nation's young population can be gleaned off the ubiquitous presence of graphiti, especially in cities like Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban, though it is yet unclear whether the black youth engage in graphiti as much as their white and coloured mates. Names like Faith47 (Cape Town), Mak1one, Falko, Cade (Durban), Rasty and Dekor are not pet names for luxury yatchs, rather, these are monikers by which the leading proponents of graphiti in South Africa are known. These folks have taken their art to and represented their country in different parts of the world and thus have the priviledge of being able to stay 'legit' with their passion.

However, for the majority of young South Africans (like their mates across the globe) bitten by the graphiti bug, their canvas is stretched across the streets and their work hours fall within the periods of darkness when they can scurry to the underside of bridges, facades of abandoned buildings, parked railway cars, and other areas in the public realm with potentials for lots of human traffic to ply their trade away from prying and disapproving eyes.

-Ayodele Arigbabu.