What is the difference between growing up in a big city and growing up in rural America? The plain and obvious is the landscapes. The condensed open field opposed to the crowded streets growing people. These barriers are barren, they lack personality. Architects see a work of art planned to perfection, but growing up, all I saw was brick and concrete. So every time an image was placed on the cement canvas, it not only brought out the personality of the building or the area, it represented the kind of people that lived there.

The south side of Seattle isn’t all bad; it has its ups and downs like most cities. But every so often you would have something to look at, to admire when walking down SODO, or crossing Rainier, or waiting for the light to change by Jefferson Park. A lot of it was just names or grievances people had for the area. People stretching their egos across the freeway with spray painted letters you could only read if you knew the style. A ghetto version of cursive. Graffiti to look at, something that isn’t a grey wall. But not all art is the same, especially across the country.

Graffiti has its roots in New York city subways. Originally it was called writing because what was being written were names and phrases (Style Wars). These words were taken from one end of the city to the other end by train car and subway stations. For the writers doing it, it was a way to see their name, their mark, become part of the city. Writers were also actively involved in the rap scene as it developed in New York. Writing was the written part of hip hop connected to the spoken and moving parts of rapping and break-dancing. Writers were active listeners, break-dancers, producers and even rappers themselves that were trying to get somewhere in the world (Style Wars). It was another outlet for those less fortunate to express themselves in the crowded, mundane, city life. To early writers it was liberating. This was a source of freedom from boredom, but it didn’t last for long. As it became more popular, the city started to enforce the areas getting tagged. It practically shut down the writers on the trains and tunnels; making it not worth the risk of throwing their names on cars if it meant danger and almost certain jail time. To the non-writing residents, graffiti was a symbol that the city was wild, that it lacked control (Style Wars). However, this didn’t stop writers. It only encouraged them to leave the cars and start writing on the streets (Lewisohn 127)

Graffiti came with an emphasis on ego. “Whose name traveled the farthest?” and “Who had the best style?” were two questions that were represented in early graffiti. The words carried no meaning other than it was there, and it was seen by the other writers. That was all that mattered (Style Wars). But that started to change. Graffiti started to develop a voice, it started to have more meaning, and it wasn’t just scratches and marks on the walls anymore. As people moved around from neighborhood to neighborhood, they left memorials to what it meant to be there, living in the concrete jungle. Sooner or later it became harder to tell the difference between what had the right to be there, and what was thrown up by some kid. The only ones who knew that were the owners of the buildings. The public eye could only guess between legal and illegal. The spread of hip hop was also a contributive factor. Since graffiti was the written form of rap, then where rap went, so did graffiti. The scale and talent of graffiti was rising fast alongside the world of hip hop. By the 1980’s, graffiti and writing had been a staple of urban culture from east to west coast. It might have started in New York, but it has since moved out into the rest of the world’s cities. Today, it has become a worldwide phenomenon. If there are buildings anywhere, they get painted and sprayed by artists and writers; by both those making a living and kids that want their voices to be heard amongst the chaotic life among the brick. Graffiti writers became less thought of as “punks” and “hoodlums” and more and more as recognized painters that worked on 8 ½-foot by 11-foot canvases. It might still be illegal in most cases, but more and more people were getting excited to see their home change into a work of art.

Some of the more famous artists even went legit, taking what they had done in alleys and were hired to place, print and paint their designs on the sides of buildings and in parks. Shepard Fairey, the man who designed and printed the poster for Obama’s, “Hope” was originally just someone pasting his pictures of Andre the Giant to the sides of walls with the words “Obey”, a threating non-message that scared the public, pointing out peoples fear of the unknown. He now owns his own brand, “Obey” and is featured as a gallery artist pulling in thousands. He also owns multiple forms of alternative media, graphic design and clothing company (Lewisohn 101). Swoon also comes to mind when you think of professional street artist. She was a formally trained artist who grew up in 80’s New York. She was someone just trying to get her name out there. Now she has gallery shows dedicated to just her works. She sees the street art market as a way to sustain herself. There is a bit of corruption in the work when people are taking it down not because they don’t want it on their wall, but because they want to sell it. Of course, she acknowledges that public art really can’t be “stolen”. Either way, she takes advantage of the path that was made for her by the writers and artists that came before her (Lewisohn 141). Aside from Swoon and Fairey, probably most famous of all is Banksy. This artist has refused to go street legal and leaves his work everywhere. He comments on the cities and their people, just by placing an image there. Each work of his carries so many meanings from their content and from the controversy of the illegality in his work. He even drove New York mad when he decided to take an “artist residency” in the city for a month. The desire for his work speaks upon the status quo, the paradox of providing a tranquil scene in a crowded street and bringing people to low income neighborhoods where they never would have gone before (Banksy Does New York). Because of these artists, graffiti and street art are at a crossroads. Is it vandalism or art? Sometimes its one or the other but most of the time it’s both.

So how does Asian and Pacific America fit into this? What makes Asian American graffiti and street art different from American graffiti? Is it the style or location? Does it have to do with the messages it carries? Does American culture impact Asian culture or is it the other way around? Well, like other ethnic communities, it’s a form of self-expression first and for most. To give a voice for those who can’t speak up. Each generation of writer or artist is always influenced by their predecessor. It comes with a certain freedom in defacing a wall, sometimes so much that it can kick you out of entire countries like it did with David Choe.

Choe is a Korean American artist who grew up in L.A. He was influenced by the writers around him. He had a desire to create and destroy, similar to that of the early writers. His father, who had been forced away from art by his Korean ancestry, encouraged him at a young age to keep creating art (Dirty Hands). Choe dropped out of art school and started looking for work at an advertising firm. He got picked up to draw movie posters which sounded like his dream job at the time. He found out later that he didn’t like being pinned down and told what to do to make a living (Joe Rogan Experience #563). With that in mind, he decided to leave his job security behind and invest his time in making murals, commissions from magazines like hustler, and posting his paintings in café galleries. But, at the apex of his ego he got caught in japan and was imprisoned for 3 months in a Japanese prison. This changed his view of things. It brought him closer to his Korean Christian upbringing. It drove his career into commercial gallery work. But it also just made him the biggest sellout, in his own eyes. All he wanted to do was graffiti, but he knew he couldn’t do it the same way anymore (Dirty Hands). For David Choe, discarding his ego was a step in the right direction. He no longer wanted to do things just for himself, he wanted to help others as well, to give back. Choe as an artist was heavily influenced by his upbringing and the mistakes he has made in his life. While his art might not carry much weight for him visually, the ability and opportunity it gives him makes him stand out amongst his fellow street artists and defacers. He lives his life at high risk and that translates into what he is plastering on walls. The places he would visit, hopping from city, state and country leaving his mark. For him, he just wants to do what he wants: combining crude imagery and traditional graffiti styles. He isn’t too invested in his messages; he just wants to make the stuff he wants to see.

That sense of ego that Choe felt early in his career is a staple of that 80’s graffiti writing. To be the best and to see your name everywhere. Hawaiian writers Estria and Prime fell into that same habit. It was part of their up brining. They immersed themselves into hip hop and graffiti as a sort of replacement culture for their Hawaiian roots. They established names for themselves in the writing community trying to outdo their competition and becoming kings of graffiti in their minds. However, like David Choe and the avid writers in the 80’s, Estria and Prime found themselves distancing themselves from their egos. They met up on the mainland and decided to go around the Islands and paint what they interpreted as “the culture”. However one of the elders came out in protest. She believed that the depictions of the gods that she knew of were foreign. They were not Hawaiian. At the time this mural was created, Estria and Prime listened to her complaints but decided that they had the authority as the artists to give their own interpretation (Mele Murals). With this wall they gained notoriety and were contacted by an art teacher of a Hawaiian charter school to teach about graffiti writing and paint the “Mele Murals”. The “Mele Murals” was a project that helped reunite Estria and Prime with their Hawaiian culture. Unlike Choe, The Artists “Esrtria” and “Prime” learned to completely forgo their egos, their sense of freedom, and started to listen to their community when they did the Mele Murals in Hawaii. They originally met up to paint their town but found themselves creating their own styles of life, what they saw and not what the others saw. But through the Mele murals they learned to listen to those around them, their family that they found while painting these murals. It helped them reconnect with their culture, something they have subconsciously searching for. They knew they were Hawaiian (Mele Murals). but first they had to strip away their self-centered perspectives and comeback home to their roots. After they painted the “Mele Murals” they returned to their old mural that had upset their community, the images that stilled carried their sense of pride and selfishness and painted it as the grey wall it originally was. Estria and Prime became the brush to help their community’s expression. They were still painting, but their culture and newfound family were guiding their hands as they painted. For some writers it’s about the freedom they wanted to have, and for others it’s a journey they take to find themselves in the world.

Lady Aoki is another Asian American artist who comes from an international background. She came over from Japan at a young age. Always distant from nature, she decided to create her own. She worked with stencils at the beginning of her career and later worked up to bigger walls and murals. She even collaborated with other writers and artists for a small period of time in New York.  While Choe’s work follows his freedom and destruction, Aoki has a focus around love, both emotional and sexual. Different they may be, but both artists share a sense of ego and the freedom of creating what they want.

With these artists in mind, it is important to point out the differences between graffiti/street art and murals of today. Graffiti and murals might be hard to distinguish visually, but they carry different meanings in their practice. Graffiti is illegal, it always has been and debatably always will be. This stems from the connotation of vandalism. If a writer is “defacing” a wall, it is sending a message to society. There is a reason for not asking permission, whether it be something mundane or for a political message. By being illegal, it adds more layers to the image. The process of making it can even have more weight than image itself. Graffiti has been used as a means to challenge authority, shown in the act of ignoring the rules and regulations in its vandalism of property. Not to say that it doesn’t overlap with murals either. However, murals tend to stem from the community at large. It can be an aggressive interpretation of the status quo, or it can reflect upon the traditions of community as it has with projects like the “Mele murals”. Murals have a more directed message to give and clearer support from the community. Muralists are invited to come and paint walls, while graffiti writers claim their space on another’s property. As an analogy, it is like a scheduled march to call out issues vs an unlicensed protest for civil rights. Both can be trying to say the same thing, but by implementing legality it can change how people give and perceive those messages. Some believe that because of this, the best graffiti is illegal (Lewisohn 127). This idea remains consistent in the rest of the world.

If we distance ourselves from America and moved beyond the east and west coast, we begin to see Graffiti change. Not necessarily in its practice, but in its location and style. Although, a graffiti writer by the name of Mode 2 would argue that at a certain point, style and geography were not dependent of each other (Lewisohn 34). This is shone is work done by A1one (Alone) who started to trend of street art and graffiti writing in his home town of Tehran and inspiring other writers and artists to do similar things. Western wild style combined with Persian calligraphy (Randall, Matt). Taking in the legal implications of graffiti and his messages, he pushes back against authority and beliefs he believes to be unjust and unfair. All around the world, there are those who push back on oppressive regimes and ideals with street art and graffiti. In Hong Kong, literal “smear” campaigns were constructed against the proposed reforms to Hong Kong’s electoral system (Portland Street Art Alliance). Now, organizations like HKwalls hold events where they bring in local and international artists to paint the walls in concentrated neighborhoods. Similar projects and organizations in Cambodia and Thailand. There are sections of Taiwan where there are districts filled with street art, both legal and illegal. Each of these regions collecting the various traditions of the locals in the area, as well as attracting international writers who come and leave their mark in a foreign world. Even in Singapore, a country notorious for their strict laws and heavy punishments is commissioning artist to help their streets more attractive (Finding Street Art in Asia). Tokyo, the city responsible for locking up David Choe, is also finding creative ways to address street art and graffiti.

In the Shibuya area, there was push to have creative spaces for people to throw up art at their own discretion. Legal walls were sections for graffiti artists to place their art work on public property without resulting in a felony. Shibuya is known as a place for young people, filled with karaoke, fast food and arcades (Pan 155). Hip hop culture is another staple in that area, bringing with it the written culture of graffiti. A student lead organization KOMPOSITON, decided to work with the community in order to create gallery like spaces for young writers and artists to participate in. It successfully created that space and received support from property owners and companies to create these public art areas (Pan 156). It was also seen as a way to bring at risk youth into a better environment and deter them away from further illegal activity. That being said, there was still a huge push for illegal graffiti. Some believe that graffiti should only have a meaning behind it if it challenges authority (Pan 157). Those writers pushed back against the gallery environment and wanted to keep graffiti in the grey area it originally associated with. Graffiti no matter where it is, will carry this debate.

To return to the purpose of this comparison, how does American, Asian American and Asian graffiti and street art connect with each other? Before my research I expected different methods used; different conversations forming and varying forms of acceptance. But what I found was a greater connection to wild style, to breaking and to hip hop. What I found was the same culture that started in the 80’s. The same people but in different forms and with different ideals. I found that this sense of ego and questioning was carried from the projects in New York to the urban neighborhoods of Hong Kong. In a sense, all graffiti is American in practice. It stems from hip hop culture. That written form of self-expression that evolved into a political and social tool. The differences I did find was corresponding to location and culture. Arguably, there is no such thing as style when it comes to graffiti. I think a better word would be context. Each piece of graffiti, each tag and each mural painted, carries with it the background of the writer and artist that wrote it. For artists like Choe and A1one, their upbringing and environment shaped the way that they would express themselves. Although their practices and need to destroy might be similar, their geography and cultural backgrounds solidify them as individuals. So whilst style might not matter when it comes to location, I believe context is the defining factor for American and Asian artists.

When it comes to graffiti and how it affects Asian and American pop culture, I think that it too revolves around location. The area that is painted upon will either embrace it or reject it. In America, it is still seen as a problem to many and gift to few. That trend follows the revolution of our world, but it is regulated in certain ways that differ from place to place. While Singapore might allow murals, it still heavily regulates what can and cannot be put on the walls. Areas like Shibuya’s legal walls are similar to Hong Kong’s art filled neighborhoods, but are still surrounded with harsh regulation and serious punishment for those found breaking their laws. People all over the world will see graffiti and either love it or hate it. With that in mind, Graffiti is not necessarily American any more than pointillism is French. It has become a worldwide phenomenon and no one culture can claim ownership of it. What distinguishes Asian, Pacific, and American apart, are the ideals and the people behind the spray can and brushes. Graffiti is here to stay, and it will reside alongside pop music, fashion, food and every other element that defines an era. At the very least, as long as there is hip hop there will be its written form, graffiti.

Work Cited:

“Chapter 7: Art, Urban Space, And Governance: Street Mural and ‘Legal Wall’ in Japan.” Aestheticizing Public Space: Street Visual Politics in East Asian Cities, by Lu Pan and Shin-E Chuah, Intellect, 2015, pp. 145–172.

DuBois, Dillon. “Japanese Graffiti: Tokyo’s Best Areas for Street Art.” The AllTheRooms Blog – The Vacation Rental Experts, 21 May 2019, www.alltherooms.com/blog/japanese-graffiti-tokyos-best-areas-for-street-art/.

Randall, Matt. “A1one – Persian Calligraphy and Western Graffiti.” Widewalls, 8 Aug. 2018, www.widewalls.ch/10-asian-artists/a1one/.

“Finding Street Art in Asia.” Expert Abroad, 22 Jan. 2019, expertabroad.com/street-art-in-asia/#Kaohsiung.

Gallard, Jean. “Lady Aiko.” Widewalls, 2013, www.widewalls.ch/artist/lady-aiko/.

Kim, Harry, director. Dirty Hands: The Art and Crimes of David Choe. Amazon. Com/ Dirty Hands: The Art and Crimes of David Choe, www.amazon.com/Dirty-Hands-David-Choe/dp/B009FIMX7Q.

Lewisohn, Cedar, and Henry Chalfant. Street Art: the Graffiti Revolution. Tate Publishing, 2009.

Moukarbel, Chris, director. Banksy Does New York. Cecchi Gori Entertainment, 2015.

Nakamura, Tadashi, director. Mele Murals. KCET, 19 May 2019, www.kcet.org/shows/pacific-heartbeat/episodes/mele-murals.

Portland Street Art Alliance. “SE Asia Street & Graffiti Art.” Portland Street Art Alliance, Portland Street Art Alliance, 6 Feb. 2017, www.pdxstreetart.org/articles-all/2017/2/3/seasia.

Rogan, Joe. “Joe Rogan Experience #563 – David Choe.” YouTube, YouTube, 16 Oct. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xw5EgZdNvQ.

Silver, Tony, director. Style Wars (1983). YouTube, YouTube, 13 Jan. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9KxbaSU-Eo.