http://shanghai.talkmagazines.cn/issue/2012-03/graffiti-chinese-characteristics?
Graffiti With Chinese Characteristics
By Jamie Barys, 2012-02
Text by Jamie Barys
Photos by Janine Reichel
Last autumn, Shanghai Kaixuanmen Corporate Development Ltd announced that they were planning to tear down Moganshan
Lu’s graffiti wall by the end of the year to make room for a commercial centre. Public outcry over the soulless irony managed to
secure a temporary stay of execution for Shanghai’s most impressive monument to street art, but demolition plans are still very
much underway. Undeterred, the city's graffiti writers have found new canvases for their work.
China is a country of walls. Apartment blocks, office buildings, schools, even construction zones are hewn in by stacks of bricks
and concrete. But despite the abundance of blank canvases in public spaces, the Western art of graffiti has not yet reached a
tipping point. Shanghai-based graffiti artists – or ‘writers’, as they call themselves – point to a lack of appreciation or
understanding from the public, a shortage of dedicated Chinese writers, legal grey areas and the unavailability of quality paint,
among other reasons, to explain why street art and graffiti have not proliferated. But perhaps the most important reason is the
abundance of street sweepers.
Graffiti is, by its nature, a fleeting art, but in Shanghai, the speed at which the work is ‘buffed’ or covered up is record-breaking.
“When we’re doing street spots at night, everything gets erased almost immediately,” Dezio, a French writer who has become one
of the city’s most prolific, says. “I’ve even had times where the next day I came back to take a picture and the wall had been
cemented over.”
Remnants of Dezio’s work from as far back as 2008 can still be found at Moganshan Lu, which amounts to a lifetime in the
graffiti world, but other writers who stick to the more illicit practice of ‘bombing’ (when writers paint or tag a large number of
surfaces in an area) have a much shorter shelf life.
Kami, a German street artist better known in the French Concession area for his ‘You Know Me Well’ tag, says, “I would do 100
posters and 98 of them would be taken down within the first five hours. I felt like someone was walking behind me.” He started to
try to outsmart the buffers by tapping into content he thought would blend in
better. Now you can see some of his stickers, copies of the Hai’er logo with his
tag written below, covering air-con units around the Wulumuqi Lu area. But this
sly creativity is already a big improvement from just a few years ago.
In the summer of 2007, the graffiti scene was almost entirely imported, and
Moganshan Lu had only four pieces on its wall. The few foreign writers in town
knew they could usually paint outside the art district without too much trouble
from the authorities, although the police did eventually catch up with them.
Luckily, the owners of the galleries asked the police to let them paint because
the work was drawing people to the out-of-the-way area. Thus Moganshan Lu
became a haven for foreign writers and a place where budding artists could
congregate and trade ideas.
One of the original Chinese writers, Hurricane ‘Hurri’ Jin is now the co-founder
of two crews (Oops Crew and Beast Mode) and one of Shanghai’s most
successful writers. He first became interested in graffiti because of his career as
a BMX rider. While looking up new tricks to try on the internet, he came across
a video that featured a graffiti wall in the background.
“I wondered what it was and why people were doing [graffiti] in skateboard
parks. So I started doing some research and found some videos of them painting
at night with spray cans,” he says. “The feeling the movie gave me was kind of
amazing. It was a kind of magic.”
Like Hurri and most other Chinese writers who are still building up their community, this month’s cover artist William Zhou is
self-taught, but that’s something he hopes to change for the future. The founder of the Shanghai Graffiti Park in Zhabei District
and the Reload crew, Zhou has spent the past six years trying to create a place where graffiti writers can practice their art without
threat from the authorities, while also learning from experienced writers.
“One hundred years ago, photography was a noble hobby for a niche group of people. Today, anyone can do it – just buy a digital
camera. Graffiti is the same. The spray can, to some people, may represent destruction of a public space,” he says. “But if some
well-educated people use spray cans, they can do something really wonderful. Graffiti can also become noble.”
To help train the next generation of writers, Zhou and his crew are planning to launch formal graffiti classes at the CG Power
Animation School. The eight week curriculum will teach middle and high school students the basics, from sketching and computer
design to hands-on practice with more experienced writers at the park.
Zhou and his colleagues also run a successful graphic design business based out of the graffiti park that incorporates street art into
corporate marketing and advertising campaigns. In fact, most of the writers interviewed for this article are peddling their graffiti
talents to the business world.
The expansion of graffiti into a marketing tool is not unheard of in the West, but it remains the only one of the four elements of
hip-hop (the other three being DJ-ing, b-boying and emceeing) that hasn’t exploded into a multi-million dollar industry, with the
exception of a few writers like Banksy or David Choe, the Facebook artist who received shares to paint the social network’s office
space. But in China, where graffiti and street art aren’t splashed on walls throughout the city, the tendency to go commercial
seems more accepted.
With the help of his crew members, Hurri now earns about 40 per cent of his living from graffiti work. The commercial side has
also given him the opportunity to do things he would never be able to do in China, like spray paint cars, which he did recently for
a Chevrolet event. Popil, another Chinese street artist known for her whimsical illustrations, was commissioned by Nescafe to turn
her designs into tissue packets.
“This has been our goal for all local creatives in China, not just street artists: to
create ongoing commercial opportunities so they can support their lifestyle, continue
to create and develop their skills and techniques,” says Adam J Schokora, founder of
NeochaEDGE, a platform that connects local artists in China with brands.
Multi-national companies are taking advantage of the trend, with the likes
McDonald’s and Coca-Cola hosting interactive graffiti events around China to
appeal to the youth demographic. More locally, BrandFury, a writer from the United
States, is making a living as the go-to artist for local restaurants. You can find his
work on the walls of The Funky Chicken and New York Style Pizza, but, until last
year, he worked as a marketing director for an entertainment company. When he got
laid off, he turned to his passion.
“I’m getting paid to do what I love. Sure, I could go and get another full-time job in
the entertainment industry or teach English, but I wouldn’t be happy. If no one ever
wants to hire me again [to paint], then I’ll go do something else,” BrandFury says.
“But I wouldn’t want my commercial endeavours to engulf my opportunities to paint
freely.”
When the Radisson Blu Pudong approached Dezio about commissioning a piece for
the hotel’s garage, he reoriented the project, turning down the paycheck and instead
securing an alternative to Moganshan Lu where he and his friends can paint
whatever they want. “They get graffiti, we get the walls,” Dezio says.
And with new semi-legal and commissioned walls popping up from Wuyi Lu to the Cool Docks, the street art scene in China is
here to stay, even after Moganshan Lu is torn down this summer.
“Drastic change, especially in the creative space, always leads to positive changes and evolutions. Moganshan has become a bit
too comfortable for the local street art scene,” Schokora says. “Although I've heard some new walls will be put up for local artists,
I'd almost prefer this didn't happen, forcing the scene to get a bit more guerilla and creative about their pieces, which is a lot closer
to the true spirit of street art culture anyway.”
Vhils Chips Away at Shanghai
Photo courtesy of 18 Gallery Magda Danysz
In February, Portuguese street artist Vhils came to town to create five pieces for his upcoming exhibit at 18 Gallery Magda
Danysz, who also brought graffiti artists like JR and SEEN to Shanghai over the past couple years.
Vhils describes his style as “an act of destruction to create”, a mode that jives well with modern China’s most ubiquitous graffiti:
the government-sponsored chai character that marks buildings for demolition around the country’s older neighbourhoods. Vhils
relates the current scene in China to Lisbon in the 90s. “There’s a confrontation of realities, really, as there are two ways of using
the public space. The work isn’t critical, but it’s reflecting on how fast things are changing,” he says.
Vhils works are hidden throughout Shanghai, but fans can wander through the abandoned buildings behind Moganshan’s graffiti
wall, Red Town and Xiaonanmen to find his pieces. His solo show will arrive in town later this month.
31 March – 7 May. 18 Gallery Magda Danysz. 188 Linqing Lu, near Pingliang Lu