Graffiti: The Chalking of Articulated emotion

Be it the nocturnal events that Banksy executes or our local ‘Ishtiaris’

display, graffiti lives through the pigment as an entity, although provocative
(at times) but legit.

For what Fauvism favored, directly nourishes graffiti. The reliance on color to
invoke emotion. Graffiti challenges the principles of social hierarchy and
inculcates an emotive gesture within the onlooker.

From the shutters of Kashmir to the peeled fences of Lahore, appropriation

pivots the political and cultural conduct into both scenarios. Such that a
similar expression (graffiti) is either read as a precedent for resistance or
purely an act of humor.

This acts as a mirror, reflecting the untapped voices. Places where concrete
facades sync the flesh residing beneath. The dead matter contests for the
mortal race.

Unorthodox as it is, the scale and position of this particular art form relishes
from its context, the streets, whereby frames break apart from the Academia
and juts out into the public domain. And as Jane Jacobs professes

“Streets are the organs of a City”

Graffiti become accessible in the most engaged nodes of the picture. The art
form is unbiased, for all to have an option about. To pioneer a broader
perspective unto social and political agendas. Ultimately Graffiti becomes a
threat, a propaganda and ultimately is washed away, as history has,
morphing itself to the hands that scribed it down.

No wonder a majority of such explicit dialogues are taken down in cities like
Lahore, as they disrupt the “Curated Realities” of these ‘Spaces’. We strive
for Culture, we long to bond from its ethnicity but alas, we demean the
bitterness that brings taste to the whole platter.

For what is the weave without a knot, and a dialogue without an expression.
Similarly a city without an assertive character is nothing but a fanciful
diorama.