Metagraffiti - by Chandra Morrison Ariyo (Paperback)

About the Book

This innovative visual ethnography examines diverse forms of self-reference and metareference that appear in Latin American graffiti art. Focusing on graffiti scenes from São Paulo, Brazil and Santiago in Chile, Chandra Morrison Ariyo shows how practitioners use metagraffiti features to influence public perceptions about this artform and its effect on the urban environment.

Book Synopsis

Focusing on graffiti scenes from São Paulo and Santiago in Chile, this innovative visual ethnography examines diverse forms of self-reference and metareference that appear in Latin American graffiti art. Chandra Morrison Ariyo works across multiple scales of contemporary graffiti production--from tags to massive murals--to show how painting the city enables individuals to reimagine their own position within the material and social structures around them. Metagraffitti reveals how practitioners such as Tinho, OSGEMEOS, Grin, and Bisy use metagraffiti features to influence public perceptions about this art form and its effect on the urban environment. Ultimately, Metagraffiti proposes a novel conceptual framework that highlights graffiti's ability to forge alternative forms of movement, sociality, and value within Latin American cityscapes. These urban images invite us to imagine what the city could be, when seen as a site for action and imagination.

Review Quotes

"Metagraffiti is beautifully written, conceptually powerful, and empirically nuanced, offering the idea of 'metagraffiti' as a frame to understand the many discourses about graffiti's multiple functions, representations, and ongoing evolution in Latin America and the world. This book is an excellent resource for research and teaching around graffiti, the urban image, and forms of voicing. The specificity with which Morrison Ariyo attends to the form, process, and function of graffiti is impressive and will energize future scholarship. I highly recommend this text."
--Caitlin Frances Bruce "author of Voices in Aerosol: Youth Culture, Institutional Attunement, and Graffiti in Urban Mexico"

"Chandra Morrison Ariyo's analysis of Latin American graffiti examines the way in which metagraffiti--what she innovatively conceives of as a graffiti about graffiti, a graffiti about graffiti as image, practice, and culture--creates both internal cohesion as much as an external awareness of the implications and potentialities of this image world in itself. Innovative and ethnographically rich, Metagraffiti is a critical contribution to the field."--Rafael Schacter "author of Monumental Graffiti: Tracing Public Art and Resistance in the City"

About the Author

CHANDRA MORRISON ARIYO is a visiting research fellow in the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science.