Performing gendered distinctions: young women painting illicit street art and graffiti in Helsinki

ABSTRACT

This article studies illicit street art and graffiti subculture among women in Helsinki, taking feminist subcultural theory into account. In previous studies of illicit street art and graffiti, women’s participation has been overlooked partly due to lack of data and through the tendency of seeing them as one unified marginalised group. Through ethnographic fieldwork, using edgework as the methodological approach, and interviews with eight women painting street art and graffiti in Helsinki, this article presents a critical perspective on how these women negotiate their positions in the subcultures from different positions. Particularly, it examines the performed gendered distinctions between street art and graffiti, and the negotiations of subcultural subjectivity.

KEYWORDS:

• Graffiti
• street art
• gender
• subculture
• distinction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Helsinki experienced significant change in its policy against graffiti and street art, shifting from a strict zero tolerance policy (1998–2008) to celebrating urban arts, which are now consumed through different institutions and municipal-led youth work. The “Stop graffiti” –project (1998–2008) was led by the municipal Urban Environment Division, the state-owned train company ‘VR’ and private security companies, such as ‘Finnish Protection Service’ (FPS). Similar to other Nordic countries, the zero tolerance policy was built on the belief of that legal graffiti and street art will work as a gateway to illegal art and vandalism, and eventually more serious crime among the youth (Høigård 2007; Kimwall 2014; Koskela 2009). Since the policy change in 2008 the Youth Department of Helsinki has actively developed youth work focusing on graffiti and street art through authorised walls, workshops and online work. Moreover, the growing number of graffiti and street art exhibitions in the city’s galleries have somewhat confirmed the popularisation and commodification of the art forms. The assumed intersections of the subcultural subject has therefore changed from being a troubled white working-class youth male to new representations, such as the seniors’ ‘K65-crew’, or female-only projects like ‘Mimmit peinttaa’.

2 All names of the participants are anonymised. The number indicates the age of the research participant during the time of the interview.

3 In autumn 2013, I was teaching a graffiti workshop for young women, authorised by the municipal Youth Department. Together with a group of young women aged 17–29, we met weekly during three months at authorised street art walls, equipped with spray cans fund by the Youth Department. At the walls, we would teach each other different painting techniques, ‘hung out’, share gossips from the scene and discuss the plans for the weekend. During the workshops, I noted that only few girls were interested in doing ‘traditional’ graffiti among the mostly street art-oriented group, something that my foreman was even ‘worried’ about as he urged me to get ‘the girls to do more graffiti’, something that I felt was difficult to do since they simply did not show interest.

4 Interviews done in Finnish and translated into English.

5 ‘Vandal squad’, originally a unit of New York City Transit Police Department, is often used in the ‘graffiti world’ as a term to refer to authoritative graffiti task forces.