War in a Dress

paxmachina:

Lush - NYC 

Melbourne based Lush is in town this week.

derica:

Jean-Michel Basquiat | Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart)

Michael Stewart was an 135 pound, 25 year old African American graffiti artist from NYC who was arrested on September 15th 1983 after being seen scrawling graffiti on a wall of First Avenue Station in Manhattan . 

 He was booked at the Union Square District 4 transit police headquarters for resisting arrest and unlawful possession of marijuana, then was transported to Bellevue Hospital Center to undergo psychiatric observation. Stewart was admited to  Bellevue Hospital at 03:22 am, handcuffed, legs bound and comatose. He never regained consciousness. was admitted to hospital about half an hour after his arrest in a coma from which he never awoke, dying on September 28th.  

Six of those officers eventually faced homicide charges, and were acquitted.  They were all white, and the jury were all white.  According to the city’s Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Elliot Gross’s preliminary autopsy report, Stewart’s injuries of facial bruises and abrasions on his wrists were not linked to his death  His death was from cardiac arrest caused by strangulation.

The November 2 medical examiner’s final report from Dr. Gross differed from his preliminary report. Gross declined to state explicitly what caused the death, but reported that Stewart died of “physical injury to the spinal cord in the upper neck” and concluded that there were “a number of possibilities as to how an injury of this type can occur…

(via southerntellect:)

Jean Michel Basquiat was upset and traumatized by the police killing of Michael Stewart; he felt that it could just as easily have been him. Obviously this piece looks at police brutality, with the word “defacement” referring to both the graffiti artist’s offense and the lethal beating to the face which the police administered for that offense (and probably more than that, too; e.g. erasure, dehumanization, non-recognition). Being the son of a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother, Jean Michel grew up trilingual, speaking Spanish, French, and English, and all three languages make frequent appearances on his canvases.

(via zuky:)

Fucking beautiful, this.

[“your hands are my caress/my daily reminders/I love you because your hands/work for justice”]

Here’s the whole Benedetti poem (in Spanish; may come back later to post a translation):

Te quiero

Tus manos son mi caricia
mis acordes cotidianos
te quiero porque tus manos
trabajan por la justicia

si te quiero es porque sos
mi amor mi cómplice y todo
y en la calle codo a codo
somos mucho más que dos

tus ojos son mi conjuro
contra la mala jornada
te quiero por tu mirada
que mira y siembra futuro

tu boca que es tuya y mía
tu boca no se equivoca
te quiero porque tu boca
sabe gritar rebeldía

si te quiero es porque sos
mi amor mi cómplice y todo
y en la calle codo a codo
somos mucho más que dos

y por tu rostro sincero
y tu paso vagabundo
y tu llanto por el mundo
porque sos pueblo te quiero

y porque amor no es aureola
ni cándida moraleja
y porque somos pareja
que sabe que no está sola

te quiero en mi paraíso
es decir que en mi país
la gente viva feliz
aunque no tenga permiso

si te quiero es porque sos
mi amor mi cómplice y todo
y en la calle codo a codo
somos mucho más que dos.

ETA: English translation below.

I Love You

Your hands are my caress
my daily reminders
I love you because your hands
work for justice

if I love you it’s because you are
my love my accomplice and my everything
and in the street arm in arm
we are many more than two

your eyes are my spell
against a cursed day
I love you for your gaze
that looks and plants the future

your mouth that is yours and mine
your mouth doesn’t lie
I love you because your mouth
knows how to shout rebellion

if I love you it’s because you are
my love my accomplice and my everything
and in the street arm in arm
we are many more than two

and for your open face
and your wanderer’s footstep
and your weeping for the world
because you are of the people I love you.

and because love is not a halo
nor morality tale
and because we are a couple
that knows it is not alone

I love you in my paradise
which is to say that in my ideal country
people live happily
without even having permission

if I love you it’s because you are
my love my accomplice and my everything
and in the street arm in arm
we are many more than two

ranaa:

Lady Pink, graffiti artist, wearing a Jenny Holzer “Truisms” shirt.

ajustine; adailyriot

(Source: deathatitsfinest)

paxmachina:

Various & Gould - Berlin, Germany

The Shell logo and crossbones = perfect

mehreenkasana:

pakistani:

“Masculine Feminine”

Graffiti art by Asim Butt, protesting the practice of “Karo Kari”, or honor killing, in Pakistan.

I saw an exhibit on Asim Butt at the Mohatta Palace Museum in Karachi, and I’d encourage you all to take a look at his art. It is dark and intelligent and unwavering in the stories that it tells. (via luminocity)

A great Pakistani artist who started the modern graffiti culture in Pakistan with EJECT signs protesting against dictator General Musharaf, sadly he left the world in 2010 (more on Wikipedia).

He killed himself. Pakistan lost yet another talented artist that day.

(Source: sabistan)

paxmachina:

 Liliwenn -  Crimes Of Minds (Brest, France

guerrillamamamedicine:

(via Graffiti Reclaims Egypt’s Revolution From Marketers : NPR)

For many young Egyptians who took great risks in Tahrir Square to help bring down a dictator, the commodification of the revolution is offensive and stupid, according to Youssef.

Egyptians aren’t dumb, Youssef said, and the ad writer has come up with his own unofficial slogan in response:

“The revolution is not a cow; let’s not milk it.”

To Youssef, the marketing also marks a heavy-handed attempt by companies to try re-write history. Some of the telecommunications companies now trying to associate themselves with the uprising are the same ones who quickly gave in to the Mubarak regime’s request to help shut down service on January 28th, just a few days into the uprising.

“Everyone sold us down the river. So all these people coming now and claiming that their phones, their kitchen appliances, their whatever, has helped the revolution — nothing has helped the revolution but the people that did the revolution,” Youssef said.

For years, Egypt’s media were reigned in and censored by government and military minders. That practice of intimidation has continued somewhat under the transitional military council now ruling the country. Egyptian journalists have been hauled before military interrogators for merely reporting on critical comments made about the army’s ruling council.

“The government has a lot of experience in propaganda and media manipulation, and advertising has been hand in hand with them in that. They’re playing the same game all over again. It just goes to show you that not a lot has changed,” said Adham Bakry, a freelance graphic artist who camped out protesting in Tahrir Square during the uprising.

‘Graffiti Is A Way To Reclaim The Streets’

Bakry is now fighting back with his street art. After the revolution he started stenciling on walls around the city the faces of two discredited leaders of the former ruling party, the NDP, holding on to prison bars. Not long after, the two politicians were arrested on corruption charges.

Bakry sees the rise of Cairo’s street art and graffiti scene as kind of politicized push back against those using the uprising as a marketing tool.

“They just want to overwhelm people with this notion that ‘this is the new Egypt’ … and keep using the same slogans … and it bothers me,” Bakry said.

Graff by ESPO