Nuart Journal #8 Intangible

Street art and graffiti have an uneasy relationship with formal heritage frameworks and indeed attempts to safeguard art on the streets may be paradoxically counterproductive – ill-fated attempts to protect street art with a layer of Plexiglass often provoke sustained attempts to destroy the work beneath. Celebrated Italian street artist Blu infamously went so far as to buff and destroy the work he created in the city of Bologna over the course of the last twenty years, sending a clear message to those who are institutionalising street art without permission.

But is the possibility of destruction part of the very nature of street art and graffiti as living forms of heritage? Isaac (2019) argues that:

The artwork located in situ distinguishes itself as an image more akin to a memory than an object, in that its physicality succumbs to the circumstances of its engagement. It conforms itself to the situation in which it is found – peeling, scratched, chipped away, weathered, or even freshly restored – all of which reflect its status as a performance both ‘representative’ of its community and ‘inclusive’ of its audience: a ‘traditional, contemporary and living’ image (UNESCO, 2011).

Street art and graffiti’s relationship with heritage has shifted dramatically in recent years. While earlier approaches were limited to considering vandalism at heritage sites, contemporary understandings position graffiti and street art as forms of alternative cultural heritage in and of themselves – with clear aesthetic, political, social and historical value. And as MacDowall (2019) points out, the proliferation of urban artforms on digital platforms have both accelerated and complicated this process of heritagisation.