The article I want to focus on in this response is the study of contemporary Indigenous graffiti and recent government interventions in Jawoyn Country. This article was particularly interesting to me because it is looking at a subculture of people that are already on the margins of society. We often talk about graffiti being an outlet, a place for people to go to voice opinions when they are typically excluded from more mainstream conversations. But this article looked at how the conversations around political topics played out within graffiti. A major point of this article was to see if graffiti was being used as a medium to express resistance. We saw in our other conversation on contemporary graffiti that often graffiti becomes a space for the masculine, dominant voice to be heard. It requires a certain level of confidence to add markings to a space that isn’t supposed to be marked. This lack of graffiti is the material manifestation of a fear of the government.
When thinking about this in the context of the middle east and around political graffiti, where people choose to put markings will tell a lot about where they are comfortable. Where do people choose to claim ownership? Where is the fear at bay? I want to examine how contemporary graffiti fits into a space that is more tightly controlled by the government.