The G-Word: Virtuosity and Violation, Negotiating and Transforming Graffiti

Why does the CIA praise graffiti as a colorful symbol of the optimism and hope of the Western World while officials in many cities describe the same phenomenon as a criminal activity and a representation of unsafety and social problems?

Graffiti is a word used to denote a complex system of actions and things, which is often described as a singular phenomenon. Graffiti has been understood and evaluated in many ways, often opposing each other. Graffiti may therefore both be evoked as one of the most influential art movements on the planet, and dismissed as something that destroys private property and turns a neighborhood into a slum. It is hailed as a modern-day childhood adventure and denounced as gang-related criminality.

In his Ph.D. thesis The G-Word, art historian and former graffiti writer Jacob Kimvall studies different ways of describing and framing graffiti in four historical and cultural contexts: The graffiti writing on the Berlin wall; the Zero Tolerance on graffiti in Stockholm during the 1990s; The interactions between subcultural graffiti and the cultural and commercial interest of the institutional art world in the 1970s and 80s; The collecting, organizing and publishing of images by graffiti enthusiasts.