Street myths

It is believed that street art loses its meaning and identity when transferred from the streets, where the choice of location and the artist's quick reaction time are largely decisive. The works, taken out of context, often do not look like unique statements, but rather as a statement: “look, they paint”. Works created by street artists at home do not fully reflect the specifics. Photo and video materials explaining what is happening on the streets are not always interesting and understandable to the viewer. For street art, the city is indeed not just a canvas or a place of action, but a root cause and support. Deprived of this, we most often get an unemotional retelling rather than the original.

Initially, I thought that a person is either an artist or he is not, and whether he is a street artist or not is not crucial. That's why my first institutional projects always included several authors “with a street background” - at that time I basically wanted to do different exhibitions, I liked to mix and not emphasize the differences between artists.

In 2018, a group of like-minded artists and I organized three unofficial street art exhibitions “Vostok” in completely non-institutional and even strange venues (a scientific library, an abandoned anti-cafe, a functioning loft in a factory that is giving up its position).

At that time, I was the only one with the relevant education and exhibition experience. However, I quickly realized that in a situation where no one knows how to do things properly, but everyone is burning with pure enthusiasm, you can just loosen the controls and enjoy the chaos - just like on the street. This was a completely new approach for me and it was wonderful! In parallel, I had done “classic” contemporary art exhibitions in very decent venues (MMOMA, Moscow Exhibition Halls) and I had something to compare it with. In 2020, I curated my last exhibition of contemporary art, after which I switched completely to street art.

Exhibitions of the series "East", 2018

Almost from the very beginning, I was dissatisfied with the lack of an idea in all this activity - except for the idea of showing actual street art. I wanted to do otherwise, but it was unclear where to look for the very support for the wild and willful art that I, as a curator, myself deprive of this support by taking it away from the urban environment. At the same time, painting on the street, being inside the movement and communicating with its representatives, I realized that we are talking about a separate and independent layer of culture. It is much larger and more complex than it may appear from the outside and deserves an original representation, not a retelling.

Exhibition "Se8er", shop of the concrete plant No. 6, 2022

In 2022 I finally formulated my own method and approach. Thanks to this, my exhibition work turned into a big research and it was no longer like the usual festival format of exhibiting graffiti.

Exhibition “Cultural Layer”, Bogorodskoye Gallery, 2022

At first I came to an intermediate conclusion: such a peculiar and free phenomenon should not be confined within a tight framework. Indeed, in all my exhibitions there was an “element of chance” inherent in the street - for example, many works were created directly on montages. This helped me to maintain my identity in terms of presentation, but I also wanted to work with meaning. It is clear that there is a certain template for contemporary art projects - there is a curatorial idea and there are artists who reveal it. But in street art, the vast majority of authors are “on their own wavelength” and are often not at all attracted by the idea of working with someone else's theme. At the same time, they can be as interesting as possible as artists.

Tolya Chertogov (PSYOP), photo by the author

The solution was the idea of applying new optics to the phenomenon. I began to look at the activities of contemporary street artists through the prism of mythological thinking, and the puzzle came together. To make it clear how I suddenly connected one thing with another, I will partially cite my curatorial text for one of the exhibitions:

Drawing images on walls is the most ancient way of creative interaction between man and the environment. From a technical point of view, rock painting can be regarded as the origin of street art, but can we assume that today's street artists are guided by the same impulses that drove our distant ancestors to create?

According to French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, “primitive people chose animals to depict not because they were pleasant to eat, but because they were 'pleasant to think about. Reza Aslan, an American publicist, writer and religious scholar believes that “Adam and Eve did not so much paint bison and bears on the walls of the cave as they released images from the wall.” The contemporary street artist creates a statement related to a particular place, a particular circumstance, or an important idea. It's not necessarily something he “feels good to think about,” but absolutely something that is important for him to think about.

When I started working on this theme, I also proceeded from the statement “every artist creates his own mythology”. To paint graffiti is in many ways to “enter history”. Not to be recognized, but to become a part of the streets, the landscape, a reason for emotions and conversations of other people. In other words, to become a proverb, a legend, a legend, a myth.

Exhibition “A Brief Guide to Contemporary Urban Mythology in Pictures and Schemes”, Central Exhibition Center Winzavod, 2023. Photo provided by the press service of the Winzavod Central Exhibition Center

Let's try to look at the application of the method using examples. If an artist has been faithfully and wholeheartedly painting a beetle for many years, his predilection can be perceived as a manifestation of totemism. If another artist performs many repetitions of his name, his actions unconsciously become a ritual. If another artist draws on inanimate objects, but persistently “revitalizes” them, adding, for example, eyes, then these his actions will not be difficult to link to animism. Not to mention that street culture is in principle quite closed, isolated and full of its own myths.

Vav Bear (111), Fet (310). Photos provided by the artists. Egor Giwe, photo: Heureux, Hunter News

From the point of view of an ordinary person whose garage has suddenly undergone a creative rethinking by some unknown vandals, everything is clear - his private property has been affected. It is not clear only what these mysterious writings and drawings, which appeared as if by themselves, mean. He did not see the authors, although he would have liked to. Children, bullies, reptiles... Who? Why? Perhaps that's how urban legends are born.

Kirill Who, photo: Anothergoodnikitoss. Why, photo: Heureux, Hunter News

And on the other side of the barricades is a mythology of its own. The artists, who made an impressive run through the neighborhood and broke away from the patrol, have their own version of events, and their miraculous rescue is practically legendary and likely to be the occasion for many retellings. As it should be in such cases, “by word of mouth”. And at some point, even by those who do not know the artists personally, but is aware that there are people who draw for such a team such letters and who once so miraculously avoided trouble.

Again, an example. Shouldn't those who draw for teams be considered ministers of some cult? What if the adherents have been writing their main word for 20 years? This idea doesn't seem so strange, if you know that over the years the team has acquired an impressive number of devoted fans, who are largely responsible for spreading the word and maintaining its legendary status.

If we return to the method, it is important to realize that artists on the street are guided by their own considerations, far from studying issues of mythological thinking. It is possible to draw a certain creature on the walls for years, but until you take part in the relevant exhibition, not to think that it is part of the city's bestiary. Or get a tattoo with a can of spray paint, but not realize that it is a manifestation of religious fetishism. There are many vestiges of mythological consciousness in any of us, it's just that I'm applying the optics to a specific group of people. This allows me to look at the actions of street artists in a different way, to see additional meaning and to link everything that happens on the street into a new system.

Exhibition “New Bestiary”, Zverev Center for Contemporary Art, 2023. Photo: Grigory Yakimov

In addition to the above, I would like to add that street art in almost any of its manifestations is a risk. The artist spends money and time to create something that he cannot sell, and often his creation can be destroyed within a few hours. In doing so, he risks his health, well-being, freedom and finances because both concerned citizens and the police tend to view his art as vandalism. From the outside it may seem that the artist's actions make no sense, but even this firmly ties his activities to the concept of mythological consciousness. After all, only a true believer can seriously devote his life to something so irrational.

About the author: Someone Ada, a graduate of the Free Workshops (MMOMA), curator of exhibitions of contemporary and street art. Has worked with such venues as MMOMA, Winzavod, Zverev Center for Contemporary Art, Exhibition Halls of Moscow, etc.