An open letter about graffiti writing

So why is it that despite the never-ending interest of the general public and an uninterrupted evolution over 50 years of history, the majority of artists involved in the exhibitions with the richest budgets are always the same, even in projects that are geographically distant, in different contexts and with different curatorships?

On closer inspection, exhibitions about graffiti writing are often collectives with very long lists of names. This is due to the very character of the movement, which thrives on the participation of an active, countless community scattered in every corner of the globe, with its peak of activity in Europe. It seems, however, that it always has to be the same people representing it, names that others have already taken the responsibility of historicising and that have been returning on many occasions since Arte di Frontiera, i.e. forty years ago: Phase2, Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper, Rammellzee, A-one, Dondi, Futura 2000 and Crash, among others. They are obviously fundamental characters in the history of graffiti, but their constant presence conveys the idea that any exhibition on writing must necessarily be anthological and reassuring, going back to the pioneers in order to show – only later and not even always – contemporary writers and the endless evolutions of the phenomenon. Clearly, it is far less problematic to show illegal works – for example in Martha Cooper’s photos – when they are far more than prescribed, relegated to the distant past, the mythical 1970s and 1980s.

Instead, we believe that analysing not the movement in general, but certain aspects of it, would help much more to approach the phenomenon that continues to elude us. Viral Vandals, for example, a 2017 exhibition curated by Good Guy Boris and Jasper van Es, analysed the influence of social media on writing by inviting active names from the European and American scene: Utah and Ether, the TOY crew from Berlin, Taps and Moses, Rage, Zelle Asphaltkultur, proposing works that were not canvases or similar, highlighting peculiar aspects of an art that has to do with painting but only to a certain extent.

Revolt painting at Beyond the Streets at Saatchi Gallery in London, 2023.

How is graffiti represented in these exhibitions?

Many exhibitions – from the very first UGA exhibitions in the 1970s in the New York galleries to the March 2025 exhibition of 10Foot, Tox and Fume in London – are presented as painting exhibitions: this is the most common way of bringing writers’ creativity from the street to the galleries. This is a method that is too often guilty of naivety: actually reducing writing to its aesthetics and thus thinking that a canvas with a graffiti by Zephyr or Blade is equivalent to a piece on a train is an extremely reductionist approach. It completely forgets the action that instead – as the vivacity of the worldwide trainwriting scene shows – is constitutive.

The life of the scene does not need museums, it is a completely independent discipline that requires no external validation. Its life is on the street and its documentation is in publishing (often self-published and therefore outside official circuits) and made available online. So, how to bring writing into an exhibition context if one wanted to talk about the phenomenon? This is an unavoidable methodological problem. Avoiding it leads to great confusion, for example between memorabilia and real works, between historical, historiographical, anthological reconstruction and artistic exhibition. The question must therefore be asked: in what way do we want to talk about the phenomenon? One can either make a portrait of the discipline, like giving a handbook on codes, stylistic features and rules, or make an exhibition that, through the artists involved, critically questions some aspect of it – as Viral Vandals did (in which, N.B., there was not a single painting), dealing with the way social media has influenced the scene.

Rammellzee next to Giacomo Balla at Visions in Motion in Milan, 2024.

Why are artists who don’t have any direct connection to writing always involved?

A clear example was the huge Beyond the streets exhibition organised by Saatchi Gallery in London in 2023. There were works by some of the most famous contemporary bombers such as the British Toxic and 10Foot, but also an infinity of works by street art and muralism artists, declined in painting for the occasion, in an imprecise itinerary in which all the various phenomena were mixed up.

Jenny Holzer is always in dialogue with Lady Pink, just as Tania Moraud and Renée Levi are always present in Parisian exhibitions: their artistic talent is not questioned, but their presence in writing exhibitions is. There are always “high” art artists who seem to be there to legitimise the writers’ paths. On the contrary, instead of playing the game of analogies, it would be more interesting to understand and emphasise the differences, finally recognising the full legitimacy of these artists’ research and taking curatorial responsibility for it.

To give just one example, Saeio does not exist in the history of contemporary art, although his pictorial research conducted in his illegal practice as a writer is extremely valid, as well as almost unanimously recognised by the scene.

Unlock Fair in Munich, 2024.

Who are the curators of these exhibitions and what relationship do they have with writing?

We wonder if there is a fundamental methodological problem in the study of this movement that comes from the fact that the scene – that is, the community – is closed and independent. It therefore means that those who are not part of it can hardly ever investigate it. Even publishing itself, a fundamental pillar for graffiti as an archive and for the transmission of the phenomenon – consider that writing arrived in Europe thanks to a film, Style Wars, and a book, Subway Art – is much less accessible than art books: often self-published in limited editions, distributed outside the major circuits, scarcely present in public libraries and not archived in any database. Therefore, gathering information, especially fresh and recent information, is much more difficult if one does not directly know the channels through which to find it.

The other methodological issue is much more intuitive: in general, one should talk about what one knows. It is a very simple principle and should apply especially in art where the ultimate goal should always be critical and never merely descriptive.

Taking these two issues together, one should not talk about writing if one has never been involved in the scene. You will necessarily lack language, familiarity with style – which is fundamental to the discipline – geographical references, historical references, in a word: experience.

For example, there is a methodological principle of the anthropology of dance that warns those who want to study this subject without ever having practised it. Why is this not the case for writing instead?

We are aware that this approach is very exclusive, but we point this out because we believe that, on the contrary, curators too often venture into an unknown and already slippery terrain, perhaps strong in a method that is effective for institutional art, but fallacious in this specific field. The result is an approach that is often too naive and generalist, perhaps even disrespectful of the discipline. If one wants to bring writing to galleries or even museum exhibition spaces, it is necessary to study their peculiar history, which is rich and varied, but above all which is not only made up of the names of the protagonists, but also of concepts that are sometimes very different from those that are examined when dealing with other currents and whose importance is not always easy to understand without having experienced them first-hand. Not understanding which part is artistically the most relevant leads to real mystifications, which the institution only accredits and transforms into historical “truth”: writing-as-pop-art, writing-as-drawing, writing-as-painting and so on. All inaccuracies that could simply be avoided with the advice or presence of experts on the scientific committee.

Adek painting over a crossed Supreme adv, New York, 2025.

What is the critical discourse proposed by these exhibitions?

The interest in writing is not limited to those who organise them, but they are often exhibitions that turn out to be well-attended by the public, proving once again the reality of that fascination. Precisely because they are large and heterogeneous collectives, it is very difficult for the exhibition project to have a more specific theme than the classic “from the street to the studio” or an apparent aesthetic coherence, which is often questionable.

This kind of categorisation of a very diverse range of expressions that share with ‘graffiti’ even one of its characteristics – illegality or aesthetics or tools or use of the name or media, for example – ends up making the concept of graffiti writing very confusing, which is instead a movement that is often independent of all the others to which it would be traced – street art, contemporary art, painting, muralism.

In contrast, categories such as Arte di frontiera, Post Vandalism, a term coined by Stephen Burke, or Post Graffiti are much more functional. It is simply a matter of formal and linguistic accuracy in identifying a movement. These terms are used to identify artistic researches and works that have a similar aesthetic in which more experimental works and operations of some writers are also included.

The logical process of this categorisation is much less forced than wanting to bring contemporary art artist such as Katharina Grosse, Monica Bonvicini or Martin Wong into the graffiti category.

We outline this open letter – just like in graffiti – in order to express some doubts and open a dialogue with those interested in dealing with writing for a more responsible curatorship, be they art venues or interested researchers. We do not simply want to propose ourselves to curate exhibitions, we all conduct our own research and realise our own projects with commitment, regardless of what “works” for the public or institutions. Our main objective is to stimulate a reflection on the methodology of representation of writing so that not only the already historicised artists enter the exhibition contexts, but also active personalities of the scene who are more than deserving. This is the only way to properly portray this phenomenon in its vitality and complexity, while also assuming all the responsibilities involved, above all: the criticality of its being an illegal act.