TORONTO – With a coffee house threatened with a fine for leaving a couple of tags on their wall, graffiti has managed to spray itself across the headlines once again.
Often considered the most deviant art form, you can’t miss street art if you tried: it’s on the walls of warehouses as you pass through Scarborough on the RT, it’s in alleyways in Kensington Market, it’s even on TTC buses and subways in the form of illegible tags, which are normally an artist’s signature, scrawled with black markers.
The question is: what is considered vandalism and what is art? And why do artists, whether experienced or just starting out, feel the need to tag walls?
Angel Carrillo is a self-described old-school graffiti artist in Toronto. He has a different way of seeing the art form that has been declared illegal by the city unless commissioned as murals.
“It’s the study of typography and self-expression,” he explained.
To him, there is no difference between legal and illegal graffiti. It’s all art in one way or another. But according to Toronto bylaws, the difference between legal and illegal graffiti boils down to whether the artist has the property owner’s permission.
“The city of Toronto is working on a database right now of commissioned graffiti art murals that are exempted from the bylaw,” said Constable Scott Mills, a social media officer for the Toronto Police.
Get daily National news
Mills worked as a legal graffiti project coordinator from 2007 till 2010, joining hands with community members and artists to beautify the city with graffiti art and cleaning up any graffiti considered vandalism.
“We just finished a great big project called the We Are Visible mural,” he said. “It’s got images of real people experiencing homelessness on it, all done in graffiti art.”
Mills finds that working with graffiti artists is the answer, instead of punishing them. He’s careful not to regard tagging as vandalism, pointing out that it depends entirely on who’s viewing it.
“In the eyes of a graffiti artist, tagging is art,” he explained. “In the eyes of a property owner or a citizen that’s not involved in the graffiti arts community, generally it’s seen as vandalism.”
Even though Carrillo doesn’t draw a distinction between legal and illegal street art, he does find that a lot of tagging done by immature artists is not reflective of its real purpose.
“Tagging is a way to pretty much advertise oneself in the city,” he said. “There are immature taggers, and you have people with experience.”
The artist wants graffiti art to be accepted as a legitimate way of expression in the city, noting that tags are no different from company logos or carved hearts in public spaces.
“It’s abnormal to say ‘don’t do it again’ to a culture based on rebellion,” he said. “You can’t do that.”
His hope is that graffiti art will be taught in high schools, so that children can learn it’s not all about breaking the law. Graffiti can be used in graphic design, fashion and videography, he said.
“We were the ones who opened street art here,” he pointed out. “Now we’re getting a slap in the face, it’s like no, you’re considered illegal.” To someone who learned to channel his energy through spray paint since high school, it doesn’t make sense.
Mills also hopes that the goodwill developed between the graffiti art community and the city will continue into allowing the art form to flourish in a legalized manner. At a recent training session for the Toronto Graffiti Management Program, it was noted that the controversial word “eradication“ was removed from the name of the program. The program is meant to help clean up vandalism from properties where owners feel double victimized, first by artists who tag their property, and then by the city bylaw agents who tell them they can face fines for not painting over the tags.
“Quite often I’ll get a call from one of those property owners and what we’ll try and do is we don’t want to see people victimized twice,” he said, adding that the program will soon be launching an app for reporting vandalism.
Carrillo is uncertain of the way the line is being drawn between graffiti art and vandalism.
Comments
Want to discuss? Please read our Commenting Policy first.