GRAFFITI ALLA PALERMITANA - PART ONE OF FOUR

Another thing I love about Palermo—the graffiti.  Like the religious street shrines, it’s everywhere.  If you walk around enough through the city’s various neighborhoods, you’ll even begin to recognize the creators.  Each has his/her/their own distinctive signature.   

Many of the graffiti artists are anonymous, but some sign and date their work, like Julieta 2014 above.  Some graffiti  is purely artistic, like this riff on Caravaggio's Bacchus.

And some is frankly political, like this pro-refugee "Open the Ports!"

It might even be incendiary, like this "Vatican in Flames" tag by Anarchy.

There are graffiti artists who have graduated to multi-story murals like this one of the anti-Mafia prosecutors Falcone and Borsellino near the sailboat harbor

and this Picassoesque pastiche that livens up a boring concrete apartment building behind the Oratorio dei Bianchi.

I ran across this lovely charcoal and water color paste-up by Alessandra in a small side street.

Here's a blockbuster style R.I.P.memorial to "Rudy the King--Palermo is with you." Judging by the lettering, I think Aldo can claim this one.

Grafitti themes can be humorous, like this giant canolo in a classic painted Sicilian cart pulled along by a whale, 

or fierce,

or accusatory like this critique of the right-wing Lega Nord party, "Salvini Parasite," 

Often, it's poignantly referential, like Julieta's signature little girl below.  Here she recalls Daphne in Bernini's sculpture, Apollo and Daphne, who was turned into a laurel tree by Artemis to help her escape rape by Apollo.

No matter the theme, highbrow or low, graffiti is always graphically ingenious.  Some people might say that the ubiquity of graffiti in Palermo is evidence of the city’s decline.  I would argue the opposite:  It’s evidence of the city’s re-flowering.

This outdoor artwork is a kind of microcosm of Palermo itself.  For me, it embodies the ambiguity of the city:  how it simultaneously attracts and repels me in a tension that is both energizing and enervating, open with possibilities and closed with dead ends.

When I first arrived in Palermo on my own for a short visit, I admit that I found it a little intimidating.  It seemed dangerous, but it actually wasn’t (and isn’t).  I found it (and still find it) dirty, chaotic, loud, unrelentingly urban, and always in your face.   

Yet I also found it (and still find it) elegant, beautiful, bursting with life, a raucous juxtaposition of Arabo-Norman and baroque, and crammed full of creativity.  It’s a city constantly in motion.  Everyone here has some kind of little gig, or scam, or passion going on.  The cost of living is inexpensive, so painters, paper makers, musicians, actors, clothing designers, leather craftsmen, sculptors, writers, puppeteers, buskers, and graffiti artists can live and work here in Palermo. 

And what’s so great about the city is that the graffiti artists, muralists, and wild-style taggers have the whole of falling-down, wrecked, and incognito Palermo as their canvas. They can put it anywhere.  No one cares.  No citations for vandalism.  Zero consequences, other than sheer enjoyment for sprayer and passer-by.   

The graffiti on an abandoned, bombed-out, or earthquake-damaged structure moves the eye away from what is gone to what is present and lets one see the city through the artist's eyes.  

As I meander, I am led by the graffiti artist's hand to find the beauty in the decay.  I need this in my life, every day, in every alleyway.  

Keep it real!

Marilyn

P.S.  The graffiti photos in this post and the three to follow were taken in our wanderings, errand running, and graffiti hunts around our immediate neighborhood.  They just begin to scratch the surface (no pun intended).  Should it give you an itch, you can scratch it here:   Buenos Aires Street Art, and here:   The Visualler.