From Dissent to Decor: How Street Art Gentrifies Graffiti – DU Beat – Delhi University’s Independent Student Newspaper

From Paleolithic cave drawings to scribbles of names on Delhi’s monuments, humans have always left their mark on public spaces. Through this article, we explore the evolution of graffiti, its roots in rebellion and dissent, and the stark contrast with commissioned street art. Roughly between 40,000 and 14,000 years ago, the Paleolithic man made the first cave drawing. Eons later, as we stroll by narrow alleyways in Delhi, we see colorful graffiti lining up old walls, peeling away slowly. Between these thousands of years, humans never once stopped leaving pieces of art in public squares, subway stations, public baths, school desks, etc. Ancient Romans and Greeks scribbled their names and slogans of resistance on buildings in 31 BC, so did Napoleon’s soldiers in 1803, and so do Modern Indians in 2024 on monuments such as Qutub Minar. Graffiti is thus a cultural, historical fact. Graffiti, as we now understand it, saw its genesis in the 1970s, when people began spray painting their names, or simple pieces of art, on trains. It also has its roots in the gang culture of New York. ‘Taggers’ went about discreetly spraying the names of their ‘crew’ on buildings and alley walls to mark their...