Understanding social critique in graffiti art from a (non-)Western perspective: Chinese students comparing Banksy and Zato through photo-elicitation

Abstract

Although obvious in Western Europe and the US, the controversy about graffiti is not as pronounced in mainland China. While the creative/destructive act of vandalising public spaces and even private property brings with it certain issues and notions attributed to culture jamming, protest action, and subversive aesthetics, this is not necessarily how graffiti thrived within the leftist context of China. Unfortunately, since graffiti practice in China is still an understudied area, many questions would soon be left unanswered as this street art form swiftly vanishes under the communist country’s rapid development in pursuit of globalisation. With the aim of demonstrating why graffiti culture in China functions quite differently from graffiti practices in the UK (and similar ‘Western’ cultures), we investigate how the art of graffiti is understood and defined by Chinese students who participated in our comparative study. The participants contrasted Banksy’s art with the works of Zato, who is quite popular in China’s contemporary graffiti scene. Through a blended method of visual ethnography, photo-elicitation, and focus group discussions conducted via video conferencing, we visualised the two graffitists against a backdrop of clashing social constructs and political contexts. Our findings provide valuable insights into persisting issues surrounding the differences between Western and Chinese graffiti practices. Graffiti art in the UK and in China may have proven comparable in terms of medium but incommensurable as to message.

Due to Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, the images included in this article and cited throughout the study were all sourced online.

Acknowledgments

This paper was first presented at the 70th Annual International Communication Association (ICA) Conference – Open Communication. The second author led the study since 2016, including running a statistical survey (during her capacity as a visiting researcher at University College London) which largely informed the direction of the research to date. She would like to thank artist/director Lance Crayon for personally sharing his insights prior to the study. This article would not have been completed without the valuable comments and academic advice offered by Professor Andrew Burn.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Around the early 1990s until 2000s graffiti was spreading in East Asian and Southeast Asian countries (e.g., Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Thailand in the early 1990s; Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan in the late 1990s; Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Vietnam circa 2000s)

2 Transcription of some of the interviews by Crayon in Thibault (2014)

3 Williams (2016) reported and traced certain events that support this as a possibility; also, in one of our correspondences with director Lance Crayon (as early as 2017) we were told that Banksy is a group.

4 This statement of Banksy is perhaps the main idea that resonated throughout the documentary film.

5 Transcription of Zato’s interview with Leitch (2016)

Additional information

Funding

This study was approved by the Research Ethics & Safety Committee of Chu Hai College of Higher Education.

Notes on contributors

Kristian Jeff Cortez Agustin

Kristian Jeff Cortez Agustin, Manchester School of Art, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

Wendy Wing Lam Chan

Wendy Wing Lam Chan, School of Communication, The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong