Week 7: Graffiti

 “Graffiti is Art” by Charles “Chaz” Bojorquez seeks to explore the intricacies and artistic components of graffiti and the roles it plays in the different environments it is practiced. Bojorquez explores the history of the form and the groups that have practiced it, from 1960’s Los Angeles Cholo culture to the hip hop style of 1970’s New York. As someone who has lived in cities for most of my life, graffiti has always been a part of the scenery, but the stigma from older people in my life affected the way I perceived it up until recently. In the small town that I lived in in rural Mexico, most graffiti was tagging, typically very crude lines meant to mark territory of local criminals. However, I would visit Mexico City very often, and every bus ride and walk around that city led to new discoveries of beautiful graffiti, intricate, colorful, and often reflective of the culture of the city. My exposure to these works and the rise in popularity of Banksy during this time changed my perspective on the form, eventually leading me to make my own stencils with my older brother and cousin. The first stencil I made was by ripping a piece of cardboard from the back of a school notebook, and it was an image of the head of the President of Mexico at the time, Enrique Pena Nieto, on the body of a rat. Even before tagging it on a wall I already felt a rush from taking a political stance and rebelling against “the system”, like my punk heroes of the time. The tag itself was very small and I placed it in one of the walls with the least transit and visibility of the town, but it felt like the whole world could see it, and consequently, see me. I really enjoyed reading this essay. I had learned about Chicano graffiti and muralism under freeway overpasses as a sociological phenomenon, but the form is entirely deserving of an artistic reading. The “Old English” typography of L.A. cholo culture and its history is fascinating. It is really interesting how it went from gang culture to the typography of the L.A. clippers uniform.