Niqabization of the population
by Shane Solanki
Ever since some dudes in New York started stealing power from street lights to power up home made sound systems to provide the sounds for block party street jams in the late seventies, graffiti has grown from being one of the essential five elements of hip hop to a global phenomenon registering the voice of the people. The simple political protest of scrawling your name on a wall, of marking your territory (amidst a plethora of signifiers which encourage consumption and submission to corporate interests), is one which governments have struggled to contain or understand; take Banksy’s work, once demonized and now deified worldwide. Princess Hijab is the pseudonym given to an anonymous artist who cheekily paints veils onto models on billboards in Paris, capital of the first country in the world to ban the niqab from public spaces. Other artists choose to travel the world to scrawl upon walls, making political statements which spill outside of galleries and institutions. Two of our current favorites are Seth, whose current sabbatical in India and China is pictured above, and Bluu.
Street art can also be staged, instead of scripted; flash mobs worldwide create protest through performance. The most well celebrated of the flash mob phenomenon is Improv Everywhere, based in New York, but you’ll find examples planet wide; take My Mother’s Funeral, a performance organized in Bombay which manipulated the tendency of the Indian populace to stand, stop and stare at any kind of public spectacle on the street, to distribute messages about personal responsibility in the light of environmental awareness. In a country where the government are doing relatively nothing to stop the mountains of man made waste created every day, perhaps it’s only through public art, performance and spectacle that education can begin. Power to the people.
