Reykjavík Grapevine - 02.08.2013, Side 26

And some say, perhaps rightfully so. In 2008,
the City of Reykjavík reported that 42,000
square metres of public space were plastered
with characters and figures, scrawled with
writing and letters and branded with tags, nick-
names and logos. Due largely to a harsh crack-
down by the city, the amount of graffiti seen
on the streets as of December 2012 has been
reduced by nearly half, to 22,000 square me-
tres. And while it’s true that some of the work
may have been done by frustrated teenagers
with nothing better to do, beloved public spac-
es such as Hjartagarðurinn ("The Heart Park")
were also born out of this explosion of colour,
creativity and subversive independence.
As some pieces of graffiti have become fix-
tures of the city and even legitimate tourist at-
tractions, the question now has become not so
much how to wipe out graffiti altogether, but
how it can exist in a way that keeps the city, the
public and the artists happy. It’s an issue at the
intersection of questions about public space,
legality and a complicated art form.
Meet the artists
Given the kaleidoscope of styles, characters,
colours and signatures that can be seen in the
city centre, it may come as a surprise that only
a handful of individuals are responsible for the
bulk of it.
One of them is Sara Riel, who sits across
from me at her cosy home on Njálsgata. As
a Bon Iver record plays quietly in the back-
ground, she tells me over coffee that she tried
to do things the legal way at first. However, af-
ter the City rejected her applications for fund-
ing, she bypassed the bureaucracy and went
directly to property owners for permission to
use their property for her art.
“All my work is completely financed and
produced and made by me, with a lot of help
from my friends. I usually had permission—
but not really support—from property owners,
most of whom have been rather nice about the
whole thing. They’ll usually tell me, ‘we allow
you to do your shit, but we won’t support you
financially.’”
Sara is an Icelandic, Berlin-educated artist
living and working in Reykjavík. Between puffs
of a hand rolled cigarette, she details her expe-
riences learning the ways of street art in Berlin
before she moved back to Reykjavík, which she
now considers her home as well as her canvas.
“I got into graffiti and street scene when I was
in Berlin, and I’ve done my share of illegal tag-
ging,” she says. “That’s kind of my origin, how it
all began.”
Even though she was in a city 2,300 kilome-
tres away, she orchestrated a gathering of eight
Berlin-based international artists to come and
paint in Reykjavík in 2005. The only remaining
of their murals is located on the back of Mál og
Menning on Laugavegur, a collection of towering
cartoon-ish monkey characters.
As her murals have not been painted over,
even though they are technically illegal, Sara has
made a somewhat contentious peace with city
officials. “In a way I have gotten support from
them because they don’t take my work down and
they don’t really bother me,” she says, a cigarette
dangling between her fingers.
Her current project is a series called The King-
doms, which features huge murals representing
the various natural kingdoms. They are visible
all over the city, from the magical mushroom on
Hverfisgata to the phoenix on Nýlendugata.
Sara compares the series to an art instal-
lation in a museum, and she makes a clear
distinction between her work and the quickly
scrawled squiggles so many often associate
with graffiti. “It’s more like really big paintings
that happen to be on the streets, which form
the museum space. It’s not spontaneous or
an instant action, like I used to work; it’s more
thought out, almost like an art show."
Cracking down
Prior to 2006, Sara says the City had a lax at-
titude about street art and graffiti. Although
graffiti was illegal, she says police were le-
nient and didn’t often fine taggers or paint over
works. As more and more people entered the
scene and the internet allowed people to rapidly
share and see designs from around the world,
tagging and graffiti exploded, and the City ad-
opted a zero-tolerance policy toward any and
all street art, modelled after a similar stance
adopted by some cities in Sweden and Finland.
“They went quite insane with this zero toler-
ance stuff. They spent an immense amount of
money on it,” says Chulo, a fellow artist who
walked in only moments earlier and enters the
conversation without skipping a beat. Sara in-
troduces Chulo (which is Spanish for ‘pimp’)
as the “King” of Hjart-
agarðurinn because he
is responsible for much
of the characters in the
community space. He is
deeply involved in the
scene, and later tells me
that he has been docu-
menting graffiti in Reyk-
javík for a book he plans
to publish.
Like Sara, he begins
to hand roll himself a
cigarette. He was born in Iceland, but lived in
Spain for several years as a child. He has been
painting since 1996. His colourful and some-
times creepy characters loom large on the
walls of Hjartagarðurinn, and although those
remain standing, many of his creations were
white-washed away when the city began its
massive graffiti cleanse.
“It was such a naïve thing. This zero toler-
ance thing hasn’t worked anywhere,” he con-
tinues. “How are we going to be the first coun-
try in the world to eradicate graffiti?”
In 2008 alone, the city spent 159 million ISK
cleaning up graffiti on road signs, fences, city
buildings, tunnels, bridges and playgrounds.
Of that amount, 50 million ISK went specifically
into the city’s “Hrein borg,” (“Clean City”) cam-
paign to catalogue and document exactly how
much graffiti was scrawled across the city.
Although the city has relaxed since then, an-
other $55 million ISK went to clean-up efforts
in 2012. What’s more, according to reports by
the national broadcasting service RÚV, the city
continues to spend 3 million ISK per month
cleaning up graffiti.
Changing attitudes
While the artists may say their work livens up
the city, there is a difference between “liven-
ing up” and total saturation. Guðmundur Vig-
nir Óskarsson, a project manager for the City of
Reykjavík, said there was backlash from both
residents and city officials alike when graffiti
and tags began to seemingly overtake the city.
“It was chaos,” he says. “In 2008, the central
Reykjavík was like a garbage town.”
Since 2008, however, Guðmundur says the
city has been slowly forging a link to the artists
themselves. He explains that a change in city
council members brought about a change in at-
titudes about graffiti, and that has shifted graf-
fiti into a grey zone of being not quite all the
way legal, but not quite all the way outlawed
either. Guðmundur
says that the city’s
graffiti policy, as of
December 2012, is
that graffiti artists
and taggers must ob-
tain permission from
property owners to
paint, and property
owners must obtain
permission from the
City Council of Reyk-
javík. Tagging in all
circumstances is prohibited, and in many cases
the City specifically removes graffiti from pub-
lic schools, street tunnels, bridges, benches,
lampposts and traffic signs. Chances are if it’s
on city property, it’s not going to last long.
In some cases, neighbouring towns have
instated policies that give artists legal places
to paint. While the City of Reykjavík repaints
the pedestrian underpass beneath Miklabraut
up to twice a week, fifteen minutes south of
Reykjavík, city officials in Hafnarfjörður allow
artists and graffiti enthusiasts to apply to paint
in five underpasses and tunnels throughout
the city. Designated spots like these can actu-
ally help contain graffiti, Chulo says, because it
gives young artists a space to practice. If young
people are encouraged to treat graffiti as an art
form, they might be less inclined to vandalise
city property with thoughtless tags.
“The problem with graffiti is that the City
made it a problem. When I was growing up we
had these places to paint. And everyone would
meet up there and everyone was into quality,
trying to get better and develop,” Chulo says.
“As they shut down all these places, we lost
the connection between the older and younger
generations, and now instead of competing
with style, people compete with space, and the
younger generations don’t develop as rapidly.
They’ve grown up this way, and they’ve never
had a place to practice, so this is all they know
how to do.”
Guðmundur says Reykjavík may not be
ready for that. He says that although the City’s
policy is still in flux and city officials are work-
ing with graffiti artists and taggers to establish
a mutually agreeable policy, painting in tunnels
is strictly prohibited. To allow that would be a
“big step,” he says, explaining that painting in
regulated places may open the floodgates to
painting in unregulated places, which results in
more clean up costs. “If you allow it to spread,
you will get a lot of smaller taggers and this will
have a snowball effect, meaning more money
to clean up the bad tags.”
Get’em while they’re young
With so much commotion and conversation
surrounding legality, public space and what ex-
actly can be considered “art,” one thing some-
times gets lost: the pieces themselves.
Amidst a haze of smoke and the gentle,
steady noise of Bon Iver, both Sara and Chulo
agree that when it comes to creating a piece,
each decision is deliberate. They take into ac-
count a number of different factors, ranging
from the placement of the piece and its audi-
ence to whether the piece will be viewed from
up close or from far away, and what or how
many colours should be used.
“It’s important to me that my pieces have
a bold quality that will capture your eye. But
within it, you’ll notice a deeper story or con-
nection with the city,” Sara says. “All those
things, for me as the artist, are a huge part of
why I do a piece and where I’m doing it.”
She mentions a piece she made in collabo-
ration with artist Davíð Örn Halldórsson called
“Cultivate Your Garden,” located on Seljavegur
42. It’s a piece that features a collection of
bright, alien-like flowers stretching horizontal-
ly across the side of grey wall. She notes that
although it is hidden, it’s right next to a kinder-
garten, which is the piece’s main audience.
Chulo, who has been silently nodding in
agreement, speaks up. “Gotta get’em while
they’re young,” he says.
“If young people are en-
couraged to treat graf-
fiti as an art form, they
might be less inclined to
vandalise city property
with thoughtless tags.”
Reykjavík’s War
On Graffiti
For the last five years, the City of Reykjavík has been wag-
ing a war. For a country without a military, this may seem
curious, but this isn’t exactly a war involving soldiers. It’s
not a war on drugs nor is it a war on homelessness, pov-
erty or any other common social ill.
It’s a war on graffiti.
By Kirsten O’Brien
The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 11 — 2013 Art
Simon Steel
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