Urban Art in Montreal’s Creative City: Intersections of Street Art, Graffiti, and Gentrification in the Plateau-Mont-Royal
Written by Katherine Hudak
Edited by Sam Lirette
Introduction
Three eccentrically dressed figures enter the scene, carrying with them plants, Ikea furniture, and a yoga mat. The steel Puerto Rican flag just behind our hipster subjects situates the semi-fictive scene in the real-world Chicago neighborhood of Humboldt Park — a traditionally working-class community that has seen high rates of gentrification. This is the scene described in The Discovery of Humboldt Park (2017) (fig. 1), a painting by Brooklyn-based artist Esteban del Valle.
Figure 1. Esteban del Valle, Transplants: The Discovery of Humboldt Park, 2017. Acrylic on raw canvas.
With this artwork, del Valle equates gentrification with neocolonialism, positioning the bohemian subjects as colonizers of a long-established community that is strongly identified by its working class Puerto Rican culture. However, instead of founding a new country in their 21st-century version of the New World, they are creating bike shops, microbreweries, and, odds are, Street Art. As a muralist himself, del Valle is acutely aware of Street Art’s role in gentrification and the related process known as artwashing.1 Artwashing, in broad terms, describes a phenomenon in which art and creative class consumption act as a harbinger of gentrification.2 Though the past decade has seen an increase in academic scholarship studying this phenomenon and its related processes, these studies have largely been based in US cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City. This research will draw from said scholarship (Billingham 2017, Deutsche and Ryan 1984, Lin 2021) and from Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the social production of space in order to contextualize the phenomenon as it occurs in Montreal, investigating the social, political, and economic factors that inform different modes of Urban Art.3
Figure 2. Whatisadam, Summer of 67, 2018. Spray paint on wall, Plateau-Mont-Royal, Montréal.
Montreal, as a UNESCO recognized “Creative City” and host to hundreds, if not thousands of murals, is a metropole that has fashioned itself as a go-to destination for its thriving arts scene. It is the site of a territorial dispute between Graffiti writers and Street Artists, with each side claiming a right to the city’s walls. The Plateau-Mont-Royal, a Montreal neighborhood synonymous with both the arts and with gentrification, is perhaps the epicenter of the Montreal Street Art scene and the stage on which the Graffiti and Street Art rivalry is visibly played. For this reason, my research will focus on this neighborhood, and more specifically on two murals situated in its heart: Summer of 67 by Whatisadam (fig. 2) and Norte-Sur by Shalak and Guko (fig. 3). These murals have been chosen because they represent a microcosm of the converging Urban Art phenomena in the Plateau-Mont-Royal. Through a critical study and in-depth analysis of Summer of 67 and Norte-Sur, the unique context of Montreal, and the city planning paradigm known as the Creative City, I argue that Urban Art in the Plateau-Mont-Royal is a visual manifestation of the conflicting spatial politics in a gentrified neighborhood of Montreal.
Figure 3. Shalak and Guko, Norte-Sur, 2008. Spray paint on wall, Plateau-Mont-Royal, Montréal.
Spatialization in the Creative City: Urban Neocolonial Conquest
Despite having been a topic of study in a diverse range of fields, from sociology to geography to urbanology, an agreed upon definition of gentrification remains evasive since its coinage in 1964 by sociologist Ruth Glass.4 In 1984, Rosalyn Deutsche and Cara Gendel Ryan, in their writing on the gentrification of New York City’s Lower East Side, describe the multifaceted nature of gentrification that varies significantly depending on the social positioning of the definer, who is most often the gentrifier rather than the gentrified. An urbanologist’s definition, for instance, of a neighborhood’s changing demographic landscape would be a “transfer of places from one class to another, with or without concomitant physical changes taking place.”5 The media, Deutsche and Ryan continue, would label it in terms of renewal, revitalization, or a “renaissance” of the city. In stark contrast to the academics’ definitions, Deutsche and Ryan cite one member of an urban minority who, from their perspective, see gentrification as, “...the process of white people ‘reclaiming’ the inner cities by moving into Black and Latin American communities,” calling to mind del Valle’s painting that would be made three decades later.6 The rhetorically colonial implications of this claim are of particular note and will be analyzed further in this essay. Yet, before we get lost in the ever-shifting definition of gentrification, one must identify the specific processes that explain the “resettling of a white population in neighborhoods where until recently they would never have dared to venture,” in an acknowledgement that before a demographic change occurs there must first be a physical transformation of the space.7 I posit that the proliferation of murals through urban planning initiatives and Street Art festivals transforms the urban landscape in such a way that it stimulates demographic changes and gentrification, which in turn continues to alter the physical space and create social tension as Graffiti pushes back against artwashing. I argue that Lefebvre’s theory of spatialization, or the production of social versus abstract space, applies to this discussion as we regard the transformation of the physical urban space as a visualization of opposing agents of spatialization.
Before delving into the unique role of art in the process of urban renewal, let us recall the one “urban minority” cited by Deutsche and Ryan who referred to a “reclaiming” of Black and Latin American communities, as we consider neocolonialism a process that underpins urbanization and is inextricably linked with gentrification. The narrative of outsiders arriving and settling down in another social group’s home, ultimately enacting negative consequences upon the original community’s culture and forcing their migration, harkens back to the colonial era when European settlers colonized the so-called “New World”' and its Indigenous peoples. Neocolonialism, as the name suggests, describes how similar processes are played out in the contemporary period, including the capitalist economic motivations and racial hierarchies that structured them. Though neocolonialism is generally employed in an international context, describing a relationship between two or more countries, the core ideologies of the phenomenon, such as racism and capitalism, can be applied on a more micro scale, feeding into critical examinations of relationships between various social groups, government bodies and corporations within a single city, such as Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal. In a neighborhood such as the Plateau, where rates of Indigenous displacement and homelessness have risen concurrently with gentrification and increased presence of “bourgeois bohemians,”8 there are multiple layers of past colonial repercussions and contemporary neocolonial practices that converge. In other words, on the unceded land of Canada, gentrification is colonialism within ongoing colonialism.
To aid us in our understanding why art has so often been the chosen conduit in neocolonial gentrification processes, let us turn to Henri Lefebvre’s theory regarding the social production of space, or spatialization. In his book entitled La Production de l'espace (The Production of Space), the French philosopher argues that space is a social product, which is semi-successfully employed by social and political state forces as a means of control, domination, and power.9 Social space encompasses complexities of social relations and their reproduction, allowing difference to exist, whereas abstract space imposes commonality and neutrality, viewing anything “other” as transgressive.10 As Eugene J. McCann writes in his article contextualizing Lefebvre in the U.S. city, “It is Lefebvre’s ability to link representation and imagination with the physical spaces of cities and to emphasize the dialectical relationship between identity and urban space that makes his work so attractive to many contemporary urban researchers.”11 As such, Lefebvrian spatial theory can provide a useful framework in our understanding of art that exists in urban public spaces, particularly the economic factors that inform its production, as we seek to understand the conditions under which it was made, what institutional powers it embodies, and the impacts of its creation. Building our argument upon the notion that the construction of abstract space is a fundamental step in bourgeois capitalist expansion, we can argue that Street Art is one method of instilling a space with more cultural, thus economic, value, rendering it a fertile ground for attracting higher spending residents and new lucrative businesses.12 The concurrence of street art and gentrification is evidence to this point, suggesting that the two phenomena feed off of each other — the result of the cultural policy being enacted globally known as the Creative City.
Montreal: The Creative City
The Creative City, briefly defined, is an urban planning paradigm or cultural policy in which “urban regeneration and renewal are linked intrinsically, inseparably, to the arts and other ‘creative’ practices.”13 In his work “The Ugly Truth: Street Art, Graffiti and the Creative City,” Raphael Schacter argues that Street Art is a neutralized form of Graffiti that “has emerged through what is now an almost total complicity with the world-dominating gospel of the Creative City,” a paradigm that he argues has reduced the arts to a “cog in the ‘creative’, ‘regenerative’ wheel.”14 The concept of the Creative City, in many ways, can be regarded as a subsection within the larger processes of neocolonialism and spatialization as they relate to gentrification. Within the Creative City paradigm, the active, intentional encouragement of murals enacts a Lefebvrian spatialization — imbuing space with abstract cultural and economic value, transforming and rendering it newly appealing for a different social and economic demographic to inhabit (or rather to colonize if we are to think of it in a neocolonial sense). Street Art, at least as it is employed in the Creative City, is not a community-embedded form of artistic expression, but rather a strategically placed magnet intended to attract prospective visitors, renters, and businesses. The General Director of the Société de développement du boulevard Saint-Laurent, or SDBSL (an organization representing 700 businesses on Saint-Laurent), Tasha Morizio, notes that the placement of a mural on a building makes it more attractive for businesses to occupy, as business owners are cognizant of the increased visitors who will inevitably come to the mural to take pictures and enjoy the space.15 Thus, the physical transformation of a space, with the aid of Street Art, heightens potential for profit, setting the foundations for artwashing. Such transformations, although they occur year-round, are accelerated by the Street Art Festival — a mainstay of any Creative City.16
Montreal hosts a number of Street Art festivals, notably MURAL Festival, MU, and Under Pressure, some of which align more closely with the Creative City paradigm than others. The former, the MURAL Festival, is not only the most well-known in Montreal, but is also arguably the most representative of the Creative City in how it alters the physical urban landscape of the Plateau and actively pushes back against Graffiti. It is also the same festival for which Summer Camp 67 was created. Beginning in the 1970s, when Montreal was in a state of economic stagnation and at risk of losing its cultural significance on the global stage, city planning authorities turned to a strategy focused on “renewing traditional sectors and…finding new international niches.”17 From then onward, Montreal has increasingly positioned itself as an international city, particularly in the arts sector, aligning itself with the cultural policy of the Creative City by intertwining its economic growth with the arts. The reason for this shift, Schacter argues, is because city authorities are “desperate to capture the potential (in fiscal terms) of this particular notion of the creative, desperate to gain access to the marketable outputs that this innovative sector can provide” and in doing so use art as a “tool for advancement in material rather than societal terms.”18 The MURAL Festival, supported by its eight institutional partners (including the Ville de Montreal, le Gouvernement du Québec, the Government of Canada, and the Conseil des Arts de Montréal) is an internationally-geared event that attracts large crowds to its murals, along with live music, workshops, and other cultural activities. In describing itself as an “important gathering of the global artistic community” that “has transformed Montreal, reinforcing the city as a go-to global destination for contemporary urban art and an ultimate tourist destination,” the organization appears to further the city’s agenda to become an international attraction.19 The success of this agenda has already been well documented. Since 2006, Montreal has been a UNESCO-recognized Creative City of Design (the use of the term “Creative City” here having no intentional connection to the city planning paradigm of the same name). The international attention has been remarked upon by locals, albeit not in a positive way. For instance, a 2018 bylaw set by the administrative government of the Plateau-Mont-Royal proposed to limit the authorization of short-term rentals (geared of course towards tourists) to commercial sectors around the main arteries of the city, including Saint-Laurent, Sherbrooke, Ave. Mont-Royal, and Saint-Denis, demonstrating the link between art tourism, commercialism, and the quality of life for permanent neighborhood residents.20
Many local artists are also displeased by the international art festival. In an email correspondence with Lost Claws, a Montrealer and Urban Artist, they wrote, “[M]ural festivals are built on the exploitation of local artists.”21 Indeed, the structured and consumerized designs of public spaces like Saint-Laurent are intended to limit most free expression, despite their proclivity for donning the term “arts district,” which is evident in the strict ban on Graffiti.22 Because space is a product, its accepted practices, values, and perceptions can be constructed or changed. Both Graffiti artists like Lost Claws and Street Art festivals like MURAL are trying to make different products out of the same space, and the space physically reflects this dual pull. In other words, the Creative City is not creating its abstract space in a void, but rather on top of — in opposition to — an existing social space. The opposing forces of spatialization, when their associated visual cultures interact, are observable in the physical public space, creating a visible conflict on the walls of the city as it is embodied in the Graffiti and Street Art rivalry.
To understand the tension between Graffiti and Street Art, it is imperative to understand the difference between the two visual cultures. Graffiti, the progenitor of Street Art, is a radical practice that is inherently a rejection — it rejects itself as art, it rejects profit, it rejects the behavioral limitations imposed by the law.23 McCann describes Graffiti in terms of resistance, a response to the changing nature of public space that embodies a “spatial politics [that] allows marginalized groups to create ‘spaces of representation’ through which they can represent themselves to the wider public and insert themselves in the discourses of the bourgeois public sphere.”24 As a mode of resistance, Graffiti is commonly employed in explicitly critiquing gentrification, as visible in the anti-gentrification tag written on the property of Le Smoking Vallée, a bistro in the Saint-Henri neighborhood of Montreal, that equates expensive restaurants with impending rent increases (fig. 4). In his study of spatialization in the contemporary city, McCann also points to the lack of racial considerations in Lefebvre’s writing, arguing that the discussion of race and racial identities in U.S. urban settings (something that we can reasonably extend to Canadian urban settings) is imperative to understand the role of imagination and representation in the social production of space. Indeed, the popular association of Graffiti with low-income Black and Latin American communities has lent the practice a negative public perception that cannot be extracted from race.
Figure 4. Unknown Graffiti writer, Bouffe trop chère = loyers trop chers, 2016. Spray paint on wall, Saint-Henri, Montréal.
Street Art, on the other hand, is created under entirely different circumstances and intentions, and lacks the racialized connotations of Graffiti. Unlike Graffiti, Street Art is not only legal, but encouraged, and its perception in the public eye is overwhelmingly positive, being heralded as a contemporary, progressive art of the people that breaks free of the confines imposed by the white cube gallery, inviting all to participate in art appreciation. In some ways, certainly, this is true. Many murals, Norte-Sur included, are created with substantial input from the local community, who sometimes even participates in the physical making of the artwork, thus strengthening the residents’ bond with the physical space of their neighborhood. Street Art under the Creative City’s dominion, however, appropriates the aura of Graffiti, that of authenticity and rebelliousness, in order to eliminate the community and culture from which it arose, often literally painting over pre-existing Graffiti, constructing an abstract space suitable for economic expansion. To quote Schacter, a vocal critic of the Creative City, “the ‘edgy’ authenticity of Street Art makes it just the perfect fit for the ‘creative’ Creative City: it is just perfectly, marvelously edgy enough. It provides an aesthetic of transgression — the transgression that all innovation must be borne of — whilst remaining perfectly numb to the social realities it occludes.”25 In this regard, Street Art is “entirely beholden to the strategic, acquisitive desires of the contemporary, neo-liberal city.”26 To put it in Lefebvre’s terms, the space it creates is an abstract space, a “space represented by elite social groups as homogenous, instrumental, and ahistorical in order to facilitate the exercise of state power and the free flow of capital.”27 Street Art, in simpler terms, paints on top of a regular city and transforms it into a Creative City.
The MURAL Festival, responsible for placing murals over existing Graffiti, is complicit in upholding the divide between Graffiti and Street Art in terms of their perceived cultural and societal value, and it is fundamental in building an abstract space of profitable creativity in the Plateau-Mont-Royal. Tasha Morizio with the SDBSL describes murals as “l’embellisement du territoire” that attracts both renters and tourists, whereas Graffiti is, in her eyes, “une nuisance au niveau de la perception négative de l'artère.”28 Street Art is thus a strategic balancing act — it assumes the adrenaline-inducing allure of graffiti and repackages it in a cleaner, legally sanctioned form of artistic expression. The artists are commissioned and paid for their works, not unlike artists in a traditional setting, with the only difference being their physical placement on brick and concrete walls rather than the white walls of the gallery. Their physical medium of spray paint cans rather than oils or acrylics lends the art form just the right amount of perceived authenticity and liberation aesthetics without carrying the negative connotations of danger, dirtiness, poverty, and racialization that graffiti so often carries. Having made clear the distinction between Street Art and Graffiti, we are better equipped to understand the different modes of space-making that each form simultaneously represents and enacts, allowing us to study their coexistence, though fraught, through a clearer lens.
A Case Study of Street Art and Graffiti
Having established the theoretical groundwork and context, let us examine a point in the neighborhood that represents how the above processes intersect on the visual plane. Rather than attempt to study an entire neighborhood’s worth of constantly changing murals and graffiti tags, I have pinpointed one singular spot, on Avenue Duluth E near Avenue Coloniale, where the 2018 mural Summer Camp 67 by What is Adam (WIA) and the 2008 mural Norte-Sur by Shalak and Guzo sit across the street from each other, both tagged with Graffiti. I chose this spot not only because it contains instances of Street Art that both affirm and problematize the neocolonial Creative City, but also because despite their marked differences, both murals have been tagged by Graffiti writers (figs. 5 & 6), thus adding a third layer of spatialization in this focused space.
Figure 5. Unknown Graffiti writers, Graffiti tags on Whatisadam mural, date unknown. Spray paint on wall, Plateau-Mont-Royal, Montréal.
The Graffiti tags on both artworks are not coincidental, but rather representative of the larger tension between Graffiti and Street Art, gentrified and gentrifiers, and social space and abstract space in the Plateau-Mont-Royal. The now-common practice of tagging an artists’ mural has sparked divisive debate, with some being more sympathetic towards the Graffiti writers and others condemning what they perceive as the defilement of another creator’s work. It is a conversation that is taking place mostly on social media rather than in the scholarly field, meaning this research will bridge the gap between discourses and examine the phenomenon in conjunction with spatial theory.
Figure 6. Unknown Graffiti writers, Tags on Shalak and Guko Mural, date unknown. Spray paint on wall, Plateau-Mont-Royal, Montréal.
Though many people have more nuanced opinions on the subject, the debate can be boiled down to two main sides. The first is the side of Street Art, which claims Graffiti tags to be visually unappealing and disrespectful. An example of this viewpoint can be seen in a Reddit post in which the user uploads an image of a mural on Saint-Viateur that has been tagged over, commenting, “This is why taggers have no class.”29 Several commenters agree with the sentiment. One user responds “too many taggers in the city screwing up murals” while another writes “Murals are beautiful and an expression of giving back to your community, tagging is taking what you want and not caring about others.”30, 31 The other side of the debate suggests that since many murals are intentionally covering up existing Graffiti, taking up wall space for future Graffiti, and contributing to the gentrification of their hometown, Graffiti writers are justified in reclaiming the wall space. Lost Claws lies on this side of the debate, writing: “[G]raffiti artists (writers) are illegally tagging any wall that they paint, so does it matter what wall it is? I guarantee that under every mural in this city there are the names of ‘illegal’ tags that were there first. Why respect artwork that doesn't respect you?”32 On the aforementioned Reddit post, a user who goes by bosny wrote a lengthy response delving into the nuances of the issue and the critical ideological differences between Graffiti and Street Art. In the post, they address several issues, including the element of gentrification, as they question the value of Urban Art forms, writing: “Does the mural add culture to its environment [social space], or is it purely decorative [abstract space]? If so, is it taking up public space that could actually be contributing to public discourse?”33 Bosny’s argument references a critical problem that underpins our discussion, which is that of opposing modes of production behind two forms of Urban Art that seek to either establish an abstract space, feeding into gentrification, or to create a social space that is by and for the residents of the community.
To begin unraveling how Summer Camp 67 and Norte-Sur create spatial meaning, we must therefore begin with a comparison of their respective modes of production. Summer Camp 67, as previously stated, was one of the murals commissioned for the MURAL Festival in collaboration with the Canadian retail brand Roots, which uses its national identity as a key marketing strategy. The mural, therefore, is an advertisement for the brand, as is visible in the design itself. The figure on the right of the composition sports a t-shirt with the Roots logo just visible enough that it is unambiguously identifiable, but just hidden enough so that it registers almost subliminally in the viewer’s mind. Slightly more obvious but still relatively difficult to discern is the #RootsIsCanada at the top right corner of the mural, underscoring yet again the Canadianness of the brand. Whatisadam is an artist who takes inspiration from Canadian imagery in many of his artworks, making him an unsurprising choice for a Roots marketing job. In writing about working with corporate sponsors in an email correspondence, Whatisadam acknowledges that the brand representative will usually make revisions to the content, meaning that in works like Summer Camp 67 it is not simply the artist who creates the content, but corporate interests as well.34 Thus, the space it creates is abstract, a space of commodification and detachment from the needs of the people surrounding it.
Norte-Sur, though also classified as Street Art, has a rather different story behind its conception, design, and creation. The Maison de l’amitié, for whom the mural was made, was approached by the artists, Carlos Ortiz (Guko) and Elisa Monreal (Shalak), who wanted to create a mural on a blank wall exploring themes of justice, culture, nature, migration, exchange, art, and indigeneity. They were making a mural because they had received funds from Vivacité, a cultural vitality project offered by the Ville de Montréal. In this way, the mural contains elements of the Creative City, having been encouraged to create Street Art by the city authorities in an effort to promote the vague notion of “cultural vitality.” However, Guko and Shalak evidently possessed enough artistic agency to decide how and where they would go about encouraging said cultural vitality, appearing to have comparatively more freedom in their mural than Whatisadam. In choosing to create a piece for the Maison de l’amitie, a community center founded in 1974 that is committed to fighting social isolation, prejudice, discrimination and violence by supporting marginalized locals and developing a sense of belonging to the neighborhood, Shalak and Guzo are inserting their practice within the concerns of the community — a practice that is visible in their other projects as well. Shalak, for instance, has facilitated workshops for at risk youth, women and community empowerment groups, and prisoners, attributing her community-forward view of art to the social and cultural values she received from her family who immigrated to Canada as part of the Chilean political diaspora after the 1970s military dictatorship. Likewise, Guko has, throughout his career, demonstrated a tendency to employ his craft in support of social betterment. In April 2014, he participated in the making of the Plateau-located mural Missing Justice (fig. 7), made with Montreal-based grassroots collective Missing Justice that raises awareness for the epidemic of gendered and racialized violence against Indigenous women, who are at least five times more likely to die as the result of violence than other women living in Canada.35 Further, Shalak and Guko actively consulted with the owners of the wall on which Norte-Sur was painted, Apollon and Kula Stamoulos, who own the laundromat next to the Maison de l’amitié and who were given a say in the colors and images used in the mural. The creation of Norte-Sur, therefore, challenges the generalizing notion that places all Street Art under an umbrella of bourgeois commercialism and neocolonial gentrification. However, the impact of the mural, like whether or not it contributed to rising rent prices or if it financially benefited the neighborhood residents, Indigenous or otherwise, is difficult to concretely discern. We can however argue, given what we know about the artwork, that Norte-Sur falls on the side of social space — an act of spatialization that is in dialogue with the community in which it is located, rather than imposing a different community in its place.
Figure 7. Guko and Monk-E, Missing Justice, 2014. Spray paint on wall, Ville-Marie, Montréal.
In the existing literature surrounding artwashing, there has been surprisingly little attention paid to specific artworks involved. I intend to fill this gap in the scholarship, arguing that through a visual analysis of Street Art and Graffiti, we can add depth and nuance to the conversation surrounding spatialization and Urban Art. Taking Summer Camp 67, for instance, we have already established how both personal and corporate interests play a role in certain subject matter of a mural, most notably in the brand logo and the artist’s specific style that works in tandem with advertisement tactics. However, I argue that the decisions made with regards to the subject matter render the piece more susceptible to the spatial politics of the Creative City, particularly in its appeal to youth and social media. In his book Aesthetics of Gentrification: Seductive Spaces and Exclusive Communities in the Neoliberal City, in which he draws a link between marketable “hipster” aesthetics and the gentrification of Northeast L.A., Jan Lin identifies the primary aesthetic trends that draw in visitors, residents and investors to gentrified neighborhoods, creating a “neobohemia.” One such trend is the appeal to vintage aesthetics and Black and Latin American cultures, which we can certainly identify in Whatisadam’s mural (the title of which already places it in the 1960s, creating a vintage postcard-like scene).36 As Lin argues, the creative neoliberal class is “lured by the air of authenticity which is both ethnic … and vintage Americana in character (vintage products include historic homes, clothing, musical instruments, and vinyl records).”37 The knee high white socks worn by the figure on the left, the high waisted jean shorts, and the vinyl record on the right of the composition all nod to elements of a vintage style that have all coincidentally reentered mainstream trends at the time of the mural’s creation. One of the most intriguing, even ironic, elements of Summer of 67 is that the artist created his own faux Graffiti in the orange background, a decision that lucidly illustrates Schacter’s argument that Street Art is an appropriation of Graffiti for corporate gain, for in including faux Graffiti, Summer of 67 is directly appealing to the edgy authenticity of Graffiti in order to sell Roots products.
On a formal level, the mural is reminiscent of retro advertisements, something from which Whatisadam explicitly draws inspiration (likely the reason so many corporations have commissioned his work). The flat planes of color with which he constructs his scene are saturated, as seen in the bright orange background, the royal blue of the clothing and accompaniments, and the baby pink accents in the figures’ hair, clothing, and vinyl record sleeve. The forms are done in a linear style, with everything clearly outlined by black. The medium of spray paint, interestingly, is hidden — the hand of the artist erased. Unless one views the mural from up close, which is not how it is meant to be viewed given its large scale, the trademark qualities of spray paint are invisible, melting into the flat, even planes of color. Compared with the Graffiti tags, which maintain the hazy, airbrushed quality and drips of paint that typically appear with spray paint, the mural’s lines and shapes are clean. The different treatment of the medium can likely be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that Street Artists have an extended period of time to carefully execute their work, whereas Graffiti taggers must work quickly so as to avoid being caught, lending their work a spontaneous quality that most Street Art lacks. This is perhaps most evident in the faux Graffiti that Whatisadam painted on the background. At first glance, the viewer might not realize that the sporadic black marks are supposed to be Graffiti, as they appear too clean and linear to be realistic. From Whadisadam’s perspective, the formal differences between Graffiti and Street Art can also be attributed to their different ideological intentions. “Graffiti is a subculture where the art is really made for other graffiti artists, and it's about the respect you get from these other artists. Street Art is generally more for the public, and these days… social media,” he writes.38 Indeed, his work is undoubtedly fitted for social media, not just in its hashtag in the top right corner and its linear qualities and vibrant primary colors that would translate well on most mobile phone cameras, but also in its hipster aesthetic that many members of the Millennial and Generation Z age groups would likely find appealing. To this point, as of December 2021, Instagram counts 11.9 million posts under the hashtag “mural.”
Norte-Sur certainly shares many of the same stylistic qualities as Summer of 67, including bright colors and clean outlines, but such qualities can in this case be largely attributed to the personal styles of the artists. Having no need to appeal to a corporation or significant social media audience (remembering that his work was created in 2008 and Instagram was created in 2010), the stylistic choices can likely be attributed to the tastes and preferences of Shalak, Guko, and the people who they consulted, including the Stamouloses, who are all private citizens rather than corporate marketing teams. What is most notable regarding the subject matter of Norte-Sur is its emphasis on indigeneity. Depicting elements from multiple Indigenous cultures, including the inukshuk, the profile of what appears to be a Haida totem, a man in a headdress, and the brightly and geometrically rendered iguana (native to tropical regions in Central and South America) make it evident that the indigeneity represented here is not limited to the First Nations communities traditionally living in Tiohtiá:ke, the unceded territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka, but rather a broader indigeneity that is inclusive of communities across the Americas. By including visual allusion to Indigenous visual cultures across North and South America, the mural reflects the reality of urban Indigenous demographics. In doing so, the mural counters the spectral narrative of indigeneity, which visually and discursively excludes Indigenous peoples from contemporary Canadian reality, relegating Indigenous existence to the past.39 Norte-Sur therefore problematizes the dialectical relationship between Street Art and neocolonialism, potentially disrupting the Creative City’s exploitative hold on Street Art by creating a mural by the community that is reflective of Indigenous reality in the Plateau-Mont-Royal.
Summer of 67 also proposes its own narrative of Canadian identity, albeit one that contrasts starkly to that proposed by Shalak and Guko. Roots, as we have already established, uses its national identity as a marketing tool, meaning it relies on a notion of Canadianness that is as positive as possible. “Companies don’t like negative attention or to offend anyone, so the art usually doesn’t contain any social or political messaging,” writes Whatisadam.40 This said, there are no traces of any darker parts of Canadian history or experiences, nor are there any markers of Indigenous presence on the land. To begin with, there are several visual cues that place the scene in Canada. The famous “Pure Maple Syrup” can, the mainstay of souvenir shops and any duty-free retailer in Canadian airports, is a pleasing symbol of Canadian identity. The fleur de lys tattoo on one of the subject’s legs and the notebook that reads “Camp de Montréal” signals to us that we are in Montréal, Quebec more specifically. Having established a national and provincial alliance, the painting constructs a narrative of a welcoming, diverse Canada, one where three young people of different races are coexisting happily and without tension. Unlike Norte-Sur, there is no visual evidence of indigeneity nor is there an acknowledgement of the unceded nature of the land on which the figures sit. To illuminate the happy, diverse Canadian narrative depicted in Summer of 67, let us read it in terms of the liberal spectacle.
As described by Johan F. Hartle, the liberal spectacle is part of an aesthetic politics with “the capacity… to both expose and integrate just about anything without touching upon the material grounds of social (re-)production, the capacity to tolerantly produce an overabundance of images and representations without touching on the structural core of the capitalist accumulation with all the logics of expansion and marginalization, of implicit and explicit violence applied.”41 For this reason, the liberal spectacle finds a natural conduit in Street Art, which Schacter described as “numb” to the social realities that lead to its creation and to the implications of its very presence. Summer of 67, in giving viewers a picture of progressive Canadian utopia, an ideal that necessarily erases the genocide and ongoing oppression of First Nations and Inuit communities not just in Montreal but across the country, the mural can indeed be read as an act of neocolonialism that hides the reality of marginalization in Canada. It embodies the “ideology of Canadian multiculturalism,” a myth that has been criticized for silencing the lived experiences of the marginalized within Canada in order to maintain the country’s reputation as a post-racial haven.42 Damaris Rose, in writing about the social mix in a gentrified Montreal, explains that post-industrial cities have “a growing interest in marketing themselves as being built on a foundation of ‘inclusive’ neighborhoods capable of harmoniously supporting a blend of incomes, cultures, age groups and ‘lifestyles’” often through targeting young, creative renters.43 In this way, Summer of 67 is a gentrifier’s liberal spectacle — a reduction of progressive politics to neutral representations of that which political and social practice seeks to achieve.
Conclusion
Certainly, such an incisive criticism of a simple mural may portray the agents in an overly black and white manner, accusing them of knowingly and villainously contributing to gentrification and neocolonial exploits. Odds are, this is not the case, for the reality is far more complicated. Whatisadam, when questioned about the mural tagging phenomenon, took no side. Rather than criticize those who painted on top of his mural, he merely acknowledged the essential differences between Street Art and the subculture Graffiti. To place the blame for rising incomes and displacement on a single mural, artist, business, or policy, therefore, would disavow the entanglement of past and present actions that foster an environment for Street Art and Graffiti to exist in conflict in the first place. From its inception to its implementation to its afterlife in the public space, each mural has its own story and makes its own space. Thus, the intentions, conscious or unconscious, behind our two murals’ creations are only one string in a web of practices, motivations, and agents that intertwine. What makes the study of this web of visual culture and its material consequences so difficult to untangle, however, is that even positive intentions can produce negative impacts. For this reason it is imperative that interdisciplinary studies on the phenomenon of artwashing continue to be done so that we may be better able to identify harmful artistic practices and instead foster an environment wherein Street Art can be the democratic artform that it has the potential to be.
Endnotes
“Interview with Esteban del Valle,” L.A. Taco, January 6, 2016. https://www.lataco.com/interview-with-esteban-delvalle.
Emmanuel Hamidi, “Visualizing Narratives of Art as Gentrification in the ‘Artwashing’ of Boyle Heights,” Berkeley Undergraduate Journal 34, no.1 (2020): 1.
For the purpose of this essay, I will use the term Urban Art to describe all visual culture situated in public urban spaces, describing both Street Art and Graffiti, that is distinct from Public Art.
D.J. Hammel,“Gentrification,” in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, ed. Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift, 360-367 (Elsevier, 2009), 360.
Peter D. Salins, “The Limits of Gentrification,” New York Affairs, vol. 5 (Fall 1979), quoted in Rosalyn Deutsche and Cara Gendel Ryan, “The Fine Art of Gentrification,” October 31 (1984): 94.
Deutsche and Ryan, “The Fine Art of Gentrification,” 94.
Deutsche and Ryan, “The Fine Art of Gentrification,” 94.
Chase Billingham in his article “Waiting for Bobos: Displacement and Impeded Gentrification in a Midwestern City” (2017) employs the term “bobo” to describe the bourgeois bohemian, or the sophisticated metropolitan professional who moves into a previously undervalued urban area.
Lefebvre, H., & Nicholson-Smith, D., The Production of Space (Blackwell: Oxford, 1991): 289.
Lefebvre, H., & Nicholson-Smith, D., The Production of Space (Blackwell: Oxford, 1991): 289-292.
Eugene J. McCann, “Race, Protest, and Public Space: Contextualizing Lefebvre in the US City,” Antipode 31, no. 2 (1999): 168.
Lefebvre and Nicholson-Smith, The Production of Space, 290-291.
Rafael Schacter, “The Ugly Truth: Street Art, Graffiti and the Creative City,” Art & the Public Sphere 3, no. 2 (2014): 163.
Schacter, “The Ugly Truth,” 162.
Rad Point, “Pourquoi les graffiteurs taguent les murales à Montréal? On leur a posé la question,” YouTube video, 10:21, 18 October 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfn-0O4v6fg.
Schacter, “The Ugly Truth, 163.
Damaris Rose, “Local state policy and ‘New-Build Gentrification’ in Montréal: The Role of the ‘Population Factor’ in a Fragmented Governance Context,” Population, Space and Place 16, no. 5 (2010): 414-15.
Schacter, “The Ugly Truth,” 163.
“The Festival,” About, MURAL Festival, https://muralfestival.com/about.
Arrondissement Le Plateau-Mont-Royal, “Adoption du Règlement modifiant le Règlement d’urbanisme de l’arrondissement du Plateau-Mont-Royal (01-277) et le Règlement sur le certificat d'occupation et certains certificats d'autorisation (R.R.V.M., c. C-3.2) afin de revoir les secteurs où est autorisé l’usage « résidence de tourisme » et d’interdire le changement de vocation de certains immeubles de grande hauteur (2018-06).” October 2, 2018.
Lost Claws, email to author, November 18, 2021.
McCann, “Race, Protest, and Public Space,” 168.
Schacter, “The Ugly Truth,” 165.
McCann, “Race, Protest, and Public Space,” 168.
Schacter, “The Ugly Truth,” 164-5.
Schacter, “The Ugly Truth,” 162.
McCann, “Race, Protest, and Public Space,” 164.
Rad Point, “Pourquoi les graffiteurs taguent les murales,” 2021. (Editor’s translation: “the embellishment/beautification of the territory;” “a nuisance in terms of the negative perception of arterial roads”)
Quatro4u2, “This is why taggers have no class. One of my favorite murals on st-viateur,” Reddit post, 2017, https://www.reddit.com/r/montreal/comments/6igi08/this_is_why_taggers_have_no_class_one_of_my.
Yeezybreezy666, “I’m not surprised honestly, too many taggers in the city screwing up murals,” Reddit post, 2017. https://www.reddit.com/r/montreal/comments/6igi08/this_is_why_taggers_have_no_class_one_of_my.
Abraxas514, “Murals are beautiful and an expression of giving back to your community, tagging is taking what you want and not caring about others,” Reddit post, 2017. https://www.reddit.com/r/montreal/comments/6igi08/this_is_why_taggers_have_no_class_one_of_my.
Lost Claws, email to author, November 18, 2021.
Bosny, “Does the mural add culture to its environment, or is it purely decorative? If so, is it taking up public space that could actually be contributing to public discourse?” Reddit post, 2017. https://www.reddit.com/r/montreal/comments/6igi08/this_is_why_taggers_have_no_class_one_of_my.
Whatisadam, email to author, November 24, 2021.
“Missing Justice,” Murs-Walls, Guko, https://guko.ca/murs-walls/missing-justice.
Jan Lin, “Boulevard Transition, Hipster Aesthetics, and Anti-Gentrification Struggles in Los Angeles,” in Aesthetics of Gentrification: Seductive Spaces and Exclusive Communities in the Neoliberal City, ed. Christoph Linder and Gerard F. Sandoval (Amsterdam University Press, 2021), 204-5.
Lin, “Boulevard Transition,” 204-5.
Whatisadam, email to author, November 24, 2021.
Sandrina de Finney, “Playing Indian and other Settler Stories of Indigenous Girlhood,” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 29, no. 2 (2015): 172-173.
Whatisadam, email to author, November 24, 2021.
Johan F. Hartle, “Art Contra Politics: Liberal Spectacle, Fascist Resurgence,” in Spectres of Fascism: Historical, Theoretical and International Perspectives, ed. Samir Gandesha (Pluto Press, 2020), 242.
Mehrunnisa Ahmad Ali, “Second-generation Canadian Youth’s Belief in the Myth of Canadian Multiculturalism,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 40, no. 2 (2008): 89-91.
Damaris Rose, “Social Mix in Gentrifying Neighbourhoods: a Montreal Case Study,” Canadian Journal of Urban Research 13, no. 2 (2004): 281.
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