The “Clean Train” Era: Creating a Space for the Legal Production of Graffiti

Abstract

Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, this chapter explores the ways in which graffiti writing culture reinvented itself in the 1990s and opening years of the twenty-first century. It argues that while new forms of illegal graffiti have emerged, this period is also marked by the rise of legal graffiti. This latter development remains overlooked in contemporary scholarship, which tends to romanticize graffiti and often construes it as a politics of resistance. Against such interpretations, this chapter shows how those committed to painting with permission are deeply concerned about the aesthetic quality of public space and are more likely to seek social and cultural inclusion on the basis of their creative practices.