Digital Collections
Contemporary Street Art
Contemporary Street Art
as Cultural Expression and Political Protest
A digital image collection of stickers and ephemera
Street art stickers are ubiquitous in urban centers around the world. Often seen at eye level or just beyond reach, stickers grace most every imaginable surface of the built environment.
Situated metaphorically at a busy intersection of imagery and content – and formed by history, mass media, commerce, and pop culture – stickers address both the personal and the political. In some cases, artists will "tag" a wall or sign, leaving behind words and images that are mysterious or mundane and thereby claiming a space temporarily their own. Stickers also sell goods and services – from hip-hop music to skate decks, energy drinks, and clothing. Other sticker artists use irony and humor to subvert advertisements as a form of culture jamming.
By their very nature, stickers typically express anti-authoritarian sentiments, often dealing with issues that are highly political and specific to time and place – both local and global. These include war and conflict, capitalism, environmental degradation, and identity politics of race, class, gender, and nationality.
Stickers typically run small in size from around 3x3 to 4x6 inches. Premium vinyl stickers can be produced easily and in large quantities through fast, cheap online commercial printing services. Many artists create their own stickers in smaller editions through photocopies, stencils, and silkscreen prints. Postal service labels or the common office “HELLO My Name Is" labels are also used for one-of-a-kind doodles or more detailed drawings, elaborate paintings, and collages.
Of the ~3,000+ original stickers in the collection, nearly all gathered on the streets by hand, roughly 45% are from NYC, 45% from Berlin, and the remaining 10% from Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, L.A., Ottawa, Toronto, Munich, Moscow, Budapest, and other cities in central and eastern Europe.
Key word searches in the collection:
Selections for presentations:
- "WTF. It's only a sticker."
College Arts Association, February 2012
Please contact Catherine Tedford at ctedford@stlawu.edu for more information or to contribute to the collection.
Ah, the knowledge of impermanence that haunts our days is their very fragrance. - Rainer Maria Rilke |