Maq Masi Blog

I used to walk past graffiti-covered walls with a mix of indifference and suspicion—dismissing them as vandalism, a symptom of urban neglect, or worse, a calling card for crime. That changed the moment I stepped into The Epic Story of Graffiti exhibition at Birmingham’s Rotunda Square, where walls didn’t just speak—they roared.

Curated by Mohammed Ali and brought to life by Soul City Arts, Birmingham Hippodrome, and the Bullring, the exhibition was a revelation. It wasn’t just about spray paint; it was about voices. The legendary photographs of Henry Chalfant, documenting New York’s subway graffiti explosion in the 1970s and 80s, weren’t just snapshots—they were visual testimonies. These images captured a cultural uprising that emerged from the margins, a movement forged by young people who had been denied access to traditional platforms of expression.

One panel featured Banksy’s now-iconic words: “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” And that’s exactly what graffiti does. It doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t wait for a gallery’s approval. It reclaims the derelict, the ignored, the concrete underpasses and overlooked alleyways, and turns them into canvases of dissent and beauty.

A section titled Graffiti Beyond Borders drove the point home: this isn’t just New York’s story or London’s story. It’s a global phenomenon. From the walls of Palestinian refugee camps to the stairwells of austerity-hit Europe, graffiti is the universal dialect of the unheard. It speaks for those whose realities are otherwise rendered invisible.

Dr Richard Clay’s words from the exhibition stayed with me: “We are kidding ourselves if we don’t think that graffiti is implicitly political. Every blank wall tells us that this place is under control.” Graffiti disrupts that illusion of order. It refuses silence. It forces us to confront the uncomfortable and acknowledge the neglected.

But graffiti’s lineage goes far deeper than the modern aerosol revolution. The word itself comes from the Italian graffiato, meaning “scratched”, and the ancient Greek graphein—“to write”. Even the ruins of Pompeii bear graffiti—expressions of love, complaint, satire, and protest. Throughout history, humans have needed to declare: I was here. Not out of vanity, but necessity.

The modern graffiti movement, however, was something bolder—born in the boroughs of New York. Figures like TAKI 183 and LADY PINK weren’t vandals; they were visionaries. Locked out of museums, they transformed subway cars into galleries in motion. Their art was mobile, untamed, democratic. It was not about fame, but visibility. Not destruction, but disruption.

Leaving the exhibition, I found myself walking through Birmingham with new eyes. The very walls I used to dismiss as defaced now appeared alive—covered not in mess, but in message. Each tag, each mural, each scrawl seemed to say: see me.

Maybe you, like me, have walked past graffiti without really seeing it. Maybe it’s time to stop asking, “Why would someone ruin a wall?” and start asking, “What are they trying to say?”

Because graffiti is not just paint. It’s the loudest voice some people will ever have.

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