Entrapped Between State and Tradition
The Effects of Graffiti and Street Art on the Jordanian Society
Aram Tarawneh
Faculty of Culture and Society Master of Science, Urban Studies 30 Credits August 2020 Supervisor: Carina Listerborn
Acknowledgment
I would like to first thank my supervisor, Carina Listerborn, for the constant support that she provided in order for me to finish the thesis. Secondly, I would like to thank my
Mum and Dad for their support and encouragement throughout the master program.
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Abstract:
The last seven years have been a transformation point for graffiti and street art in Jordan. Due to the constant inequality that women face in Jordan, graffiti and street artists grabbed the first opportunity presented to them in order to address these issues, when the Baladk Street Art Festival took place in the capital of Jordan, Amman. They used this festival as an opportunity to spread awareness and tell stories related to inequality as well as claim their rights. Resistance from conservative groups in the society towards these murals resulted in more restrictions from the municipality about the content of them. However, artists did not back up and fought their way to keep their art on the city’s walls, but they had to work harder in order to disguise the messages they wished to send to the public. Social change was used as the main concept to follow in this thesis in order to arrive at a conclusion that shows the change that had taken place in Jordan due to graffiti and street art, especially social change regarding ideas and social movements as well as political processes. In order to get the people’s, the municipality’s and artists’ perspectives, qualitative methods were used such as interviews and a survey. Results showed that the municipality's position on the effects of graffiti and street on the society as well as the strict regulations are partially the same. In the meantime, interviews with artists and the survey showed the struggle the artists go through when painting and also the change in the people’s behavior that occurred in the last seven years, from the start of the project until now. The survey’s results showed that most of the people understood the exact meaning of the murals and some respondents interpreted the messages according to their experiences. Therefore, it was concluded that graffiti and street art can serve as a prospective tool to drive social change in the Jordanian society, yet not solitarily. Different aspects, such as people’s behavior, shifting norms as well as a change in laws and policies need to work hand in hand in order to achieve the desired change and cause a social and cultural evolution.
Keywords: Graffiti, street art, social change, mural, women’s right, equality, Jordan, Amman
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Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 5 1.1 Research question and aim ...... 7 1.2 Thesis outline ...... 7 Chapter 2: Background ...... 8 2.1 Graffiti and street art in the Middle East ...... 8 2.2 Graffiti and street art in Jordan ...... 9 2.3 Feminism in Jordan ...... 10 2.4 Graffiti and feminism in Jordan ...... 13 Chapter 3: Theoretical framework ...... 15 3.1 Social change ...... 15 3.2 Street art in public spaces and their role in initiating social change ...... 18 3.3 Feminism and street art in Amman ...... 23 Chapter (4): Methodology ...... 25 4.1 Interviews ...... 26 4.2 Survey ...... 27 4.2 Limitation ...... 30 Chapter (5): Analysis ...... 30 5.1 Interview analysis ...... 30 5.2 Survey analysis ...... 36 Chapter 5: Results and discussion ...... 44 Chapter (7): Conclusion ...... 47 7.1 Future research ...... 48 References ...... 50 Appendix (1) ...... 54 Appendix (2) ...... 55 Appendix (3) ...... 57
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Chapter 1: Introduction
Contemporary graffiti started back in the 1970s in New York, where individuals used to tag their names and their crew names on buildings, walls, subway trains, et cetera, where it was a part of the street subculture of hip hop (Duncan, 2019). Not long after, graffiti started to be utilized as a method of protest and resistance such as the socio- economic crisis in New York and the student revolts in Paris, which started to link graffiti and street art to more serious topics such as politics, economics, culture and many more (Austin, 2001, as cited in Taş, 2017). At that point, people started calling it street art due to the fact that people began recognizing it as an effective urban art (Duncan, 2019). As recent as this year, with the Black Lives Matter movement, graffiti and street artists took the initiative to write and paint murals all over the world to show solidarity. In that, the artworks become a means of story-telling and symbols of resistance to the system, as well as expressions of support to the movement, in reference to the murals painted of George Floyd.
Notwithstanding, graffiti and street art are not necessarily a reason for revolutions and heated debates but they, most of the time, call for “compassion and unity amongst society members while still touching upon key issues of the contemporary world” (Zu’bi, 2018). One particular movement that used this type of art as a peaceful claim of their rights is the feminist movement. Graffiti and street art have been used to spread feminism onto the streets and from there to the society (Nour, 2017). It also helps to challenge gender norms and boundaries in societies and between disciplines (Millner, Moore and Cole, 2015). An example on that is the popular feminist slogan “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”, which was first tagged on a wall of a bathroom by a woman. This indicates that “[…] Writing on a wall can actually promote social change” (Pabon, 2012, 0:20). The previous example demonstrates that movements as immense as the feminist movement start small and take a consistent effort from people all over the world in order to make it as great as it is right now. That shows that social change through graffiti and street art begins with small steps in order to have a full effect in the future. Nour (2017) also explained that graffiti and street art in the feminist movement can help inspire women all over the world to demand rights and equality and educate people about women’s rights as well, because this art is a powerful medium to show the world that women are insisting on their rights after many years of inequality and ignorance. One of the first graffiti artists to paint and write about the inequality women go through is Lady Pink, who was one of the trailblazing female graffiti artists and was active in New York in the 1980s (Mu’min, 2013). Another graffiti artist, Tatyana 5
Fazlalizadeh, who dedicated her art to feminism, where she started a ‘anti-harassment campaign’ that was called “Stop Telling Women To Smile”, for which she interviewed women about their experiences in the streets and then hanging those experiences on posters in the streets in order to raise awareness and address gender based street harassment (“Stop Telling Women to Smile”, n.d.). So, as early as the 1980s, graffiti and street art have been giving marginalized people a way to express their needs and giving them the chance to be heard by the society and the state. Hence, Nour (2017) argued that “feminism was among the most important causes that graffiti has helped”.
However, these processes occurring in the Western world have not been reflected in the same way in the Middle East. Graffiti and street art in the Middle East have been mainly associated with war, protests, revolutions, and the Arab Spring, which will be further discussed in the background chapter. Being predominantly associated with those topics and having street art and graffiti that target other important issues, such as women’s rights and equality, had a rocky start. But in 2013 in Jordan, a street art festival by the name of Baladk Street Art Festival launched and gave the opportunity to artists to use their art beyond canvases and onto walls. This festival helped the beginning of a new approach to graffiti and street art by raising awareness about topics such as feminism and equality because “walls could be a direct reflection of the community’s needs” (Nour, 2017). Despite this progressive momentum a few years ago, some groups within the society, as well as the municipality, impeded the dissemination of this art form and partially continue to do so nowadays. Street art and graffiti that spread awareness about specific topics are being controlled both by the municipality imposing criminal laws and punitive regulations and restrictions, and by conservative groups that do not agree with what is being portrayed on the walls and therefore vandalize them or report them to the municipality, which eventually removes the mural in question.
In this thesis the terms graffiti and street art are used interchangeably, as both, street artists and graffiti artists, share the same methods and the same space and hence are subjected to the same problems and rules (Gentry, 2008), especially in a controlling society as Jordan. Furthermore, different artists, who were interviewed for this thesis, referred to themselves as both graffiti artists and street artists. Albeit, this thesis will focus on murals, as it is the most popular form of graffiti and street art in Jordan.
Also, to note that, for the purpose of this thesis, classic gender binary of male and female is going to be applied. That is due to the fact that artists and the general public in Jordan do not yet identify other than both genders. It is possible that there are people, who identify otherwise, but for the current situation in Jordan, it is not evident.
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1.1 Research question and aim The main purpose of this thesis is to discover if graffiti and street art is helping movements in Jordan such as the feminist movement and if it is one of the factors to ensure social change in the future, through discussing first the concept of social change and then comparing it to the situation in Jordan. This thesis is aiming to investigate whether graffiti and street art are changing the Jordanian society or not. This is due to the fact that this type of art is recent in Jordan, therefore it is a new approach to tackle topics and issues in order to verify if it can achieve social change in the future. Against this backdrop, the main question explored is:
Are graffiti and street art paving a path for a change in society as well as the law that might help eradicate the unequal norms and gender-normative traditions that women are being subjected to in the Jordanian society?
Another question can be raised here, which involves the possibility of graffiti and street art being a part of a social movement in the future that might lead to social change. Due to graffiti and street art being recent in Jordan, it is still too early to answer that question in the span of this thesis. However, getting a result from the main question of the thesis might give a hint of how the situation might be in the future and the possibility of getting graffiti and street art involved in a social movement to a better future in that field.
These questions were raised when reading on the effects of graffiti and street art in the Middle East and especially the role it played in the Egyptian revolution in the Arab Spring as well as the Palestinian case and other Middle Eastern cities and countries. Since this type of art was introduced in the Middle East in a context of war, revolutions and protest, the question was raised in order to research whether it will have the same effects if applied in different aspects such as women’s rights and equality.
1.2 Thesis outline The next chapter is going to give a background about the history of graffiti and street art in the Middle East and in general, and its outset in Jordan in particular. Moreover, the feminist movement in Jordan will be discussed, and how graffiti and street art have been incorporated within it in order to spread it within the kingdom.
Chapter 3 is targeting the theoretical framework that is going to help answer the main question. It is discussing the theory of social change and how it can be linked to graffiti and street art in order to cause social change in the Jordanian society. It will also explain
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more on the involvement of graffiti and street art in the feminist movement in order to demand change and rights.
After explaining the theoretical framework and discussing the concept of social change, the thesis then explains in chapter 4 the methodology that was used in this thesis in order to get the public’s and the artists’ point of view on the field of graffiti and street art and their effects on the society. Followed by that, an analysis of the methodology, interviews, and a survey, will be presented in chapter 5.
Chapter 6 is elaborating on the results of both the interviews and the survey and their link to the theoretical framework.
A concluding regard of the thesis as well as a further future research that could be done on the same topic, will be explained in chapter 7.
Chapter 2: Background Before starting to write about the impact of graffiti and street art on the social life and how it might trigger change in the core of the society and the possibility to lead to social change, this section will address the situation of graffiti and street art in the middle east in general and in Jordan specifically and look into how this type of art began and what was it like before the growth of graffiti and street art that is roaming the street of Amman nowadays. This background section will illustrate the cultural, political, and social situation in the Middle East, focusing on Jordan, and how graffiti was affected by that situation and show what made street art and graffiti in the Middle East as it is now. Also, since this thesis discusses the involvement of women in this type of art and specifically about how street art and graffiti are targeting topics such as equality and women’s rights and the role of feminism, this section will discuss feminism in Jordan and the situation of Jordanian women, which triggered the use of graffiti and street art for sending messages to the public in order to ensure change towards these specific topics.
2.1 Graffiti and street art in the Middle East Graffiti and street art in the Middle East have started to appear in the past two decades on the walls of different cities in the area. One thing to be noticed is that this type of art became popular in these cities and countries as a result of revolutions, wars, civil war, et cetera. The example of the Gaza Wall and the Separation Wall in Palestine, which are being used to write the history of war, the different revolutions, and the political views (Peteet, 1996) represents how street art and graffiti were depicted in the Middle East. Another example is Egypt with graffiti being one of the most used methods in the 2011 revolution against the regime, for people to express their feelings and use the walls as a 8
news stand due to the lack of trust in the media (Taş, 2017). The walls of Beirut are filled with graffiti that are political in nature and are still being used even after the war in Lebanon was long gone (Najjar, 2015). Another example is the “Syria Banksy Project” from 2019, which also addresses the civil war and political instability in the country (Riziq, 2019). It is evident that graffiti and street art in the Middle East are being used to incite revolutions or are political in nature. That is why it made it harder for other Middle Eastern countries to start a base for graffiti and street art as a way to achieve societal change peacefully and not for it to be seen as resistance to the government or the political situation in the country. 2.2 Graffiti and street art in Jordan Earlier on in Jordan, graffiti and street art were depicted as either people tagging, writing random words, phone numbers, love confessions or as art that is provided by the government that is only related to the Jordanian nationality and to show loyalty and praising the country as well as the monarchy. Even though the art provided by the municipality is public art or street art, it has been connected entirely to the country and the monarchy and it might be the only type of public art that the people in Jordan grew up seeing and drawing. This may mean that introducing other types of graffiti that address actual issues and not only to show loyalty to the monarchy, might be rejected or found strange by a huge population at the beginning.
In Jordan specifically, artists didn’t use art in the street in order to send messages about morals, the inequalities or any political statements to the public because it was and is still considered a crime that will be punished by fines or even imprisonment. This is due to the fact that Article 319 in the Jordanian Penal Law states that anyone displaying any type of drawing, images or any type of art that is offensive to morals, the monarch and traditions of the country, will face punishment (Penal Law and its Amendments, No. 16, Year 1960, Subject No. 476, Article No. 319). In the 1960s, Jordan was going through a transition where the Islamic group of Muslim Brotherhood started infiltrating the Jordanian society in order to restore the country to its religious state before the British occupation. The Muslim Brotherhood had different agendas such as bringing religion back into politics and following the religious laws instead of more modern and international laws (Al Shalabi, 2011). Many of their followers were considering anything that is foreign in nature, be it art/graffiti/ feminism, a Western topic that they must fight due to their perceived misalignment with religious laws and a religious way of living, and a fear of values deemed as inappropriate being entrenched into society. The situation stayed like that until 2013 when Al-Balad theatre launched a project called Baladk Street Art Festival in collaboration with international
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organizations as well as the Greater Amman Municipality, that invites artists from Jordan and the rest of the world to participate. Each year they have different topics for artists to paint and write on selected walls around the city of Amman. The start of this project was both by a demand from the artists as well as an initiative from the municipality itself. The artists requested free spaces to paint on without the murals being removed, said Maha Hindi, a graffiti artist based in Amman, who participated a couple of times in the Baladk festival (2020). Furthermore, the municipality aimed for branding Amman as the next art destination, said Laila Ajjawi, an artist based in Irbid, the second biggest city in Jordan (2020). Even though it is now allowed to participate in this type of art in the streets of Amman, the artists wanted less attention from the government and not the other way around (Zu'bi, 2018). This might go back to the fact that the government has to regulate and monitor every single art piece before it is being put up, which explains why “painting walls with permission has meant painting less” (Pabon, 2016). They give artists a minimal amount of freedom when choosing what to paint and highly restricts their creative freedom so that they cannot reach out with their messages. This might be the case since, beside the first Penal Law, the government requested an amendment to the Electronic Crime Laws regarding hate speech, expanding it to include “any word or action that incites discord or religious, sectarian, ethnic, or regional strife or discrimination between individuals or groups” (Human Rights Watch, 2017), which even inhibits artists in posting any ‘offensive’ content on social media even if it was a picture or a drawing, which limits the artists’ freedom of expression. Despite all of that, artists still found a way to be both non-offensive to the constitution of the country and be critical on topics such as women’s rights, equality and many more. 2.3 Feminism in Jordan Inequality and violence towards women in the Middle East were practiced centuries ago but unlike the rest of the world, where women stood up to these inequalities and fought for their rights, it stayed the same in the Middle East. This is linked to when Jordan was released from the British occupation, movements in Jordan such as the Jordanian national movement and the Muslim Brotherhood started to form in order to change the political and social situation in the country after it got its independence (Anderson, 2005). Due to these movements, whose participants grew up in an occupied land and rejected the British influence after the occupants left, the Jordanian Law and Constitution was formed. The Jordanian law was formed in the 50s and 60s and is still in full use nowadays with many laws being unequal to women (Anderson, 2005). Women in the Middle East are facing what is called a “double jeopardy” (Sakr, 2002) which means that they are not only limited in their political and civic participation but also 10
experience hardships due to the patriarchal structure of society, where they are not the ones who decide to work, to travel or even whom to marry but their male guardian (Sakr, 2002). This indicates that “[…] discrimination against women is embedded in legal systems and social customs” (Sakr, 2002). These practices are still being perpetuated in Jordan and the Middle East, which means that when people start demanding change and social justice, the conservative groups just justify it as an intrusion from the West. This demand was faced with opposition and resistance. Because of that, the claims from the conservative groups are that they are “resisting an intrusive and alien culture flowing from the West that threatens to encroach on the patriarchal order” (Tripp, 2013). Charles Tripp’s (2013) book that is called “The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East” represents the situation in the Middle East and how conservative groups deal with any ‘Western’ topic such as equality and feminism. In different parts in the Middle East, the people who defend the practices that are unfair and unequal, while others are struggling to abolish them, see themselves as the ones who resist “a new hegemonic power that wants to dominate the globe” (Tripp, 2013). To these defenders, this ‘hegemonic power’ can be portrayed as secularism, liberalism, capitalism or any other “power of the West” (Tripp, 2013). They see that this power from the West is the foundation for the plans to dominate and occupy the Middle East that started 200 years ago. Tripp explained that, 200 years ago these invasions were simply “imperial conquests” (Tripp, 2013) but after that and especially in the post- colonial decades, Middle Eastern economy, the culture and society were involved within the Western power and were heading towards globalization. Because of that Tripp (2013) said that: those who champion ‘tradition’ – however interpreted – see themselves as the unwilling subjects of a world order that they have not made, have no control over and that appears intent on marginalizing them and their values” (P. 178) With that being said, some people look at feminism as a Western concept that might bring new and radical ideas to the cultural and religious traditions that have been practiced for many years. They see it as an intruder to their private lives and societal values. These groups oftentimes will distort feminist ideas and intentions and portray them as defiance of culture and religion. Nour (2017) points out that “religions and traditions in the East are still so strong and dominating that we can consider them as an unwritten constitution”. So, even though the law criminalizes some cultural practices such as honor killing and underage marriage, men are still practicing them knowingly. Their claim is that the state and the government are giving in to the term ‘globalization’ and are being corrupted by the West. This to them, means that their traditions and 11
extreme religious ideas are going to be obliterated (Tripp, 2013). Therefore, the conservative movements resist these modern trends, and the government affirming their concerns by posing lesser jail sentences to those who practice illegal cultural practices, due to the fear of demonstration to change the government which can lead to disastrous political changes as it has been the case in the Arab Spring (Tripp, 2013). Nadia Shamroukh, the director of the Jordanian Women’s Union (JWU) explained that women who are feminists do not see themselves as feminist but as activists (Cuthbert, 2017). This is due to the fact that every time the topic of feminism comes up; they have to get defensive and be prepared for criticism from different parties, such as ridiculing their values and arguing against everything they stand for. That is because “many in Jordan see feminism as a taboo subject, and a threat to the social and religious order” (Cuthbert, 2017). Different organizations want to disseminate and explain the concept of feminism to women in Jordan and to clarify their rights for them, but at the same time they receive harsh backlash from the society and political parties. According to data collected in a paper called “The State of Jordanian Women's Organizations - Five Years Beyond the Arab Spring” by Peter A. Ferguson (2017), a big portion of the activities initiated by women’s organizations in Jordan are directly overseen by “elites with strong regime ties” (Ferguson, 2017). This goes back to the fact that these elites are legalizing the liberalization strategy for these activities while attempting to make sure that these activities will not develop into movements that might defy the Jordanian regime (Ferguson, 2017). This strategy entails that the state will provide the organizations with tools and rules to service women, like workshops, but will undermine their roles as a political actor, that might demand change in the system and thus “challenge the regime” (Ferguson, 2017). These restrictions are explained by what Sonia Alvarez (1989), as cited in Ferguson (2017), called “NGOisation”, which means that in order for these organizations to become a legal entity, they are given “a narrow set of policy options that end up equating empowerment with overcoming marginality from the market, while disregarding the multiple oppressions faced by women” (Schild, 2000, as cited in Ferguson, 2017). This explains why women’s organizations are usually forced to focus on “unsustainable programs” rather than fight for certain rights that might require a political change, in which they are not allowed to participate in or they will lose their legality (Ferguson, 2017). Hence, Ferguson (2017) concluded: “The strategy worked, insofar as the survival of the regime was never seriously in doubt. The ability of women’s organizations to effectively seek change in the status of women was impaired by the elite-driven interests of their leadership as
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well as the inability to expand their programmatic focus to issues more concerning to the broader female population in the country” (P. 66)
In order to fully understand the situation, the next paragraph will give a brief context of the Arab spring and how it affected Jordan. In 2011, in the midst of the Arab Spring, people in Jordan as well went out and protested and demanded change but the adjustments that they were requesting were more towards the economy and some political changes and not to overthrow the monarchy. The people demanded the “sacking of the prime minister” and the adoption of a new election law (Cullbertson, 2016). Throughout the year of 2011, protests recurred and still insisted on the same demands, yet not comparable to the claims made in the neighboring countries. After the Jordanian protesters saw how the situations escalated in Syria and Egypt, they thought “even with the problems in Jordan, the alternatives were worse” (Al-Sharif, 2013, as cited in Cullbertson, 2016). They did not want what happened there to happen in Jordan. Also, the King himself wanted to avoid the escalation of events in Jordan, and eventually met the protestors’ demands by “sacking the prime minister, prosecution of high-profile corruption cases, constitutional amendments, government salary increases, the creation of additional government jobs, and early parliamentary elections” (Cullbertson, 2016). On the other hand, the Jordanian tribes played a huge part in the Arab Spring and the stability of the situation in the country. They help sustain the political stability as well as the social relations in the country (Kao, 2015). They have their rules and laws and most of them also go side by side with the traditions and norms that are perpetuating patriarchal societal structures such as honor killings. Going against their rules and traditions might mean that the state will lose their support, which is not in favor of the state. Concluding this part, it can be stated that the regime’s fear of women’s organizations having a political stance and voice that might lead to political movements, such as the Arab Spring, and the fact that people with ties to the regime are responsible for such organizations, is the reason why the politicization of women’s organizations in Jordan is stagnant (Ferguson, 2017). 2.4 Graffiti and feminism in Jordan Research published hitherto on the role of female artists in the graffiti scene can be identified as Western-centric, failing to reflect the reality in the Middle East with its specific contexts. In spite of that, Jordan followed some footsteps from feminist events around the world such as the “Femme Fierce” in London (Nour, 2017) and implemented something similar in Jordan, such as the Women on Walls, a graffiti initiative for Arab Women to paint murals that empower women around the Arab world and they had a 13
regional street art festival in Amman under the theme of “From Fear to Freedom” (“WOW- Women On Walls”, n.d.). Another Initiative was called “Break the Silence” campaign by the organization artmejo (“Break the Silence: Submission Highlights”, n.d.), where female artists were invited to submit online sketches of different topics concerning equality and women’s rights. Last year the artists were asked to present sketches of a survivor after she was subjected to domestic abuse by her husband. It was a form of a competition, where the sketch that was chosen to be the winner was painted on a wall in Amman. It is well established in the research literature on female graffiti and street artists (Gentry, 2008; Pabón, 2013; Pursley, 2012; Nealon, 2018) that this genre is still male dominated and that female artist struggle to integrate themselves in that world without being judged or/and harassed for what they are doing. This previous research elaborates on how female artists fight to become dominant in this art field and how they leave their mark for everyone else to see. The difference between the premises that this previous research is based on and the situation of graffiti and street art in Jordan is that in Jordan, as mentioned before, graffiti and street art did not exist and was not a dominant field of art before the beginning of this decade. So, when the government allowed graffiti and street art and the Baladk Street Art Festival began, artists, both male and female, took the opportunity alike, without any gendered competition of dominion in the field. The artists, who want to participate in the Baladk Street Art Festival are chosen according to their art and not their gender. A committee in the festival assesses art sketches anonymously and selects the artists purely on their work (Zu'bi, 2018), which allows for a more equal and fairer curation. With this removal of potential gender biases, it is noteworthy that, according to the Baladk participants in one of the annual festivals, the majority of the participants were women (Baladk, 2018). In this context it has to be understood that what is acceptable as feminist graffiti and street art in the Western societies differs largely from what is barely acceptable in the Middle Eastern societies (Nour, 2017). Gender issues and demanding rights for freedom of sexual expression through graffiti and street art are equivalent between the West and the Middle East, nevertheless, the public reception of art is different in the Middle East and the West. Traditions and religion are heavily rooted within the society. Therefore, explicit feminist street art might be viewed as problematic for some groups. Hence, these already extraordinary art forms have to convey their messages indirectly in order to “handle sensitive subjects in their street arts […]” (Nour, 2017). It is against this backdrop of the discourse on street art and graffiti, and feminism in the Middle East in general, and in Jordan in particular, questions regarding a possible 14
change in the status quo have to be considered. The next chapter is going to focus on the concept of social change and its different types in order to investigate what type of change has occurred in the Jordanian society and how that change has been incorporated through graffiti and street art so far as well as exploring the possibilities on how it can be more included in the society.
Chapter 3: Theoretical framework 3.1 Social change Social change is a wide topic and can be interpreted in different ways depending on the context it is based on. Social change can be applied to different fields such as environment, demographic processes, technological innovations, economic processes, ideas and social movements, political processes and so forth (Wilterdink and Form, 2019). In the context of this thesis, social change is targeting the ideas and social movements field, since the demands that are being represented on murals are targeting a change in traditions and how people approach topics such as women’s rights. Diani (1992) defined social movement as “[...] networks of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in political or cultural conflicts, on the basis of shared collective identities”. By comparing this definition to what graffiti and street art is trying to achieve, they share the same aspects such as being informal, and involving a group of people targeting specific aspects of a society such as the cultural and the social aspects which will lead to targeting topics as women’s rights and inequality. Before exploring the discourse on social change, the term society, in this context, needs to be addressed as the understanding of change employed here is a societal phenomenon, in which the society consists of various layers defined by different aspects. According to Sztompka (1993), the first two layers of society are the ideas (beliefs) and rules (values and norms) which make up the cultural dimension. The other two layers are actions (interactions) and interests (opportunities) which make up the societal fabric. These four layers combined make up what is called the “socio-cultural field” (Sztompka, 1993). Each of these layers undergo changes constantly and these changes can be the transformation of ideas, the disappearance and appearance of values, norms, morals and ideologies, the acceptance or rejection of new norms, rules, and values. These changes can be explained by the definition of social change “social change, accordingly, is conceived as the change occurring within, or embracing the social system. More precisely, it is the difference between various states of the same system succeeding each other in time” (Sztompka, 1993). According to this definition, social 15
change targets the social system that includes the social dynamics of the system, which means that it triggers the development and progress of a society in order to move on from previous social thinking into a new social thinking. According to Sztompka (1993) there are 6 different components of social change which are: 1- the ultimate elements which involve the human population. 2- Interrelations among elements which includes the relationships between humans and their interactions. 3- The function of elements in the system as a whole which can mean the different roles that individuals play as well as the actions taken by individuals in order to change the social or preserve it. 4- The boundary which involves inclusion or recruitment in different groups 5- The subsystems which are the different groups and sections of a society 6- The environment which means the natural conditions. In accordance with these sections, street art and graffiti can be discussed from all of these angles, but for the purpose of this thesis, the focus will be on the interrelations among elements and the functions of elements in the system as a whole. Street art and graffiti might possibly be the driver to social change and artists might be the individuals that initiate that change. According to Sztompka (1993), the possible changes within the social system involve 1- Change in structure which means the appearances of equalities and inequalities and the emergence of new relationships. 2- Change in function which means the role individuals play in order to insure this change, meaning that the artists that lead a normal life and have different jobs can change their functions from their day jobs and use street art and graffiti as a tool to change the dynamics of a society after work or in their free time. Furthermore, social change is driven by individuals and depending on the effect that they are trying to accomplish and the kind of change they are trying to insure, they will also change and modify their choices and motives in order to achieve the effect they are aiming for. This definition of social change enables the elaboration of art as a driver for change, as graffiti and street artists use their works to address inequality and marginalization, especially in a context like the Jordanian one, where unequal gender-normative traditions and structures heavily limit marginalized groups’ impact on the society and their right to change these inequalities. Art that is intended to discuss these issues will focus on the community and the society as a whole which can facilitate empathy in people that might pave the way for social change and life improvement. An example for that is Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy (2017), who said in an article about her involvement in targeting, through art, the crimes against women in Pakistan “art can directly empower the most vulnerable members of society” as well as “creativity and individual freedom can generate new opportunities” (Chinoy, 2017). Her movies about the violence committed towards women in Pakistan have triggered change in the law and the severity of punishment towards the people 16
who commit these crimes, which means that her type of art had a major change both in the social structure as well as the legal one. If art exists in a society where artists have the chance to send out messages, people will be more aware of the lack of rights for vulnerable individuals in the society such as women. This is why, nowadays, with the increase of graffiti and street art in the Jordanian society, the current situation may shift and artists, from both genders, can participate to send out messages to the people that an alteration might be taken place or that the artists are constructing a new platform to demand change. Street art and graffiti can be used as a tool to communicate with the people, just as Jessica Pabon (2012) said in a TED talk “graffiti is a form of writing and writing is fundamentally about communicating. So, these writers are reclaiming public space, they are stating their presence […]”. Further she quotes a Chilean graffiti crew member by the name of Bisy that explains how graffiti can be a driver for change: “Painting your voice in the street becomes an act of courage and perseverance, without realizing it you transform the city, along with transforming yourself… transform everything around you” (2012, 10:05) This change might also be able to bring feminists and women activists to the street in order to let people recognize the reason for their activism and the rights that they are demanding and to let the community acknowledge their presence in the society (Nour, 2017). This type of social change might eventually lead to resistance from parts of the society. As mentioned in the last chapter, a majority of people in the Middle East resist any type of Western concepts, street art and feminism included, and this will form a type of resistance from conservative groups, such as taking down murals or reporting murals to the municipality as being offensive to the status quo. However, there is another type of resistance that can stem from the artists themselves. The fact that these artists started painting murals talking about inequalities and demanding rights is a type of resistance itself but directed at the social norms that are already being practiced in the society. Just as Charles Tripp (2013) explains it: “Thus, there are two registers of resistance. One draws upon universal principles of citizens’ rights to fight against the discriminatory practices of social institutions and the laws of the state. The other portrays any such campaign as part of a larger imbalance in a world where Western power works against the identities, religions and cultural traditions of Muslims, Arabs or other subordinated peoples” (p. 179) The reformation of these traditions and norms might be initiated through artists from their exposure to the concepts of modernization, feminism, human rights, and women’s rights to be specific. 17
3.2 Street art in public spaces and their role in initiating social change Considering street art in public spaces necessitates the discussion of the socio-cultural perspective of public space. According to Borja and Muxi (as cited in Ortiz, Garcia- Ramon and Prats, 2004), public spaces from a socio-cultural perspective can be defined as spaces “of interrelation, social encounter, and exchange, where groups with different interests converge”. They explain that the design and creation of public spaces serves as a vital element to encourage social interaction, to increase the quality of life and to minimize age and gender exclusions. In the field of street art and graffiti, the public spaces that are used to show the art are what is called the “everyday spaces” (Mean and Tims 2005). The locations of street murals are situated on housing walls, stairs, and sidewalks, which people use and see on an everyday basis. Everyday spaces in Amman are used by everyone, women and men alike, and since Amman is a city highly dependent on cars, the murals’ locations inside tunnels, on tall buildings and walls are strategically selected in order to increase exposure. In nowadays Amman, these everyday spaces are being used as a platform for artists to show their art and to resist the norms and traditions as well as to give the voiceless a voice to fight for their rights such as women. Street art and graffiti in the public space can be “vital to social and cultural movements that seek to challenge dominant orthodoxies” (Calhoun, 2005). Changing the social system and “challenging the dominant orthodoxies” starts with the artists in that everyday space, where a group of individuals who share the same experiences, can be a part of the change (Tripp, 2013). Change starts in that time and space, where the main goal for all of the artists is to participate in this type of resistance in order for social change to unfold. By doing that, street artists establish a sense of belonging to that public space and will provide the people the chance to feel the same sense of belonging to that space and to the art that is there that relates to their social exclusions. By saying that, a public space, in that sense is not only its geographical location, but what the artists make of it in order to give people a space to relate to (Albet, 2001. As cited in Ortiz, Garcia-Ramon and Prats, 2004). These murals and art pieces connote the public spaces they are occupying with particular meanings for particular individuals due to the actions performed within it by the artists. This gives these spaces a “dualistic quality” being related to an individual’s experience and a space or “object” in the world (Entrikin, 1991). After establishing that some of these everyday spaces are related to people’s experiences and not merely geographical locations, a discussion is needed on the possibility of those spaces to facilitate social change, especially for the excluded individuals, through street art and graffiti. Street art and graffiti are a “vital instrument” (Gleaton, 2012) to demand social change in communities, where many voices are left 18
unheard. It visualizes protests for everyone to see in order to empower those who are marginalized and excluded (Gleaton, 2012). That way people may become involved in the process of change and it gives them the opportunity to be a vital part in what is going to be placed on walls (Lewisohn, 2008). Also, it will trigger dialogue between people and motivate people to ask questions. Individuals who walk by these murals are now acknowledging them and can interpret them as they please. In contrast to other sources of information, such as traditional news, which can be limited in terms of content and availability, street art and graffiti are available for anyone to see (Chaffe 1993, as cited in Gleaton, 2012). However, a challenge that these artists face is the fact that it is always easier to acknowledge the aesthetic and the beauty of a mural rather than trying to decipher its intended meaning or it can be “[...] easier for the observer to assess the aesthetics of the work of art itself and the intentions of the artist than to be certain of the effect it might have on the spectators” (Tripp, 2013). The effects of this type of art on people are sometimes misunderstood and that might be connected to the fact that people are made to think decades ago that art is not connected to any aspect of a society (Millner et al., 2015), especially in Jordan, where the messages and meanings that target social society and the traditional norms are well hidden. But according to Lefebvre (1996) “[…]the future of art is not artistic, but urban, because the future of 'man' is not discovered in the cosmos, or in the people, or in production, but in urban society”. He explains that, when art is put at the service of a city it does not necessarily mean the beautification of the city through art but the appropriation of the urban, where the artworks serve as examples of progress. Lefebvre argues that using resources such as art, helps the integration of the urban society into that city. Lefebvre’s argument corresponds with how Gentry (2008) treated the city as “a living and breathing system created by those living in it” which can be linked to what Park and Burgess (1925) said, that the city is not just a ‘physical mechanism’ but is a part of a vital process of those who create it, being the people. Graffiti and street artists take the initiative to rewrite and reinvent the city because the “city is not a neutral space but reflects the values of its creators” (Gentry, 2008). Thus, especially in a society as Jordan, artists plan their art in a way that resonates with the experiences that the people go through in that urban society in order to help them focus on important topics such as women’s rights and equality. This can be achieved through quotes, poems, and idioms and thereby the artists themselves will create a new type of “visual idioms” (Tripp, 2013), which “[…] generate[s] a sense of identity by creating the visual reference points for shared historical memories” (Tripp, 2013).
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Graffiti and street art as a tool for protest is situated between the poles of novels and unfamiliarity, and the ability for it to resonate with its beholders. Some murals in Amman that call for women’s rights and feminism use poems and idioms that people are familiar with in order to enable people to rethink the meanings behind these poems and idioms and linking them to what is being drawn (Tripp, 2013). Also, poetry “has always represented the highest literary expression for Arabs” (Capezio, 2017), which indicates that people in the Middle East are well attached to poems. An example for that is a mural (Figure 1) that was painted by the end of 2019 in solidarity with a woman, Fatima Abu Akleik, who was subjected to extreme torture, having her eyes gouged out by her husband. The mural consisted of a black and white portrait of a woman looking to the sky with a line that is repeated 11 times from a poem written by Saba Firas Al-Abadi, that translates to “Let your eyes be cast on the mountain tops”. This poem was written for the purpose of the “Break the Silence” campaign initiated by an online platform called Artmejo and the Embassy of the Netherlands in Jordan.
Figure 1: “Break the Silence” Mural. Translation: Let your eyes be cast on the mountain tops. 20
Art is meant for everyone, but the messages are for certain people. Some individuals will appreciate the aesthetic value of it while others will relate to the presumed meaning due to personal experiences, which might give them a chance to reconsider the status quo and eventually act upon that reconsideration. By accomplishing that, this kind of art can be an essential part in a resistance movement against the political and the social climate in the area, such as the graffiti used in the Egyptian revolution, which may create a “new, possibly radical aesthetic” (Tripp, 2013). According to these examples, graffiti and street art will eventually be a reminder and a slogan for resistance towards the “political [and social] status quo” of the city (Taş, 2017).
According to Gleaton (2012), graffiti and street art are not supposed to be unbiased and neutral or hard to interpret and it should be easy and simple to understand the message behind it so it can speak to everyone, whether they agree or not, in order to start “political [and social] dialogue[s]” (Gleaton, 2012). Banksy said that graffiti eventually wins because “it becomes part of your city, it’s a tool” (Banksy, as cited in Gleaton, 2012). But in the case of Jordan, it does not always win. It can be hard to decipher or be biased. A further difference in the Jordanian case is that artists have the permission to paint on wales to a certain extent. Sending messages or telling a story through graffiti and street art without taking restrictions and the culture in mind is deemed to be removed from the city’s context. An example for that is the mural that was painted as a memorial for an Egyptian LGBTQ+ and feminism activist Sarah Hegazi, who committed suicide after she was subjected to torture and oppression for coming out to the public as homosexual. The mural also had the words “but I forgive” written on it, referring to of the lines Sarah wrote in her suicide note. The mural was immediately reported to the municipality through a surge of hate speech on Twitter. Consequently, the municipality localized and investigated the mural, and not even 12 hours after the installation of the mural it was covered in black paint by order of the municipality. The anonymous artist who painted it, posted on social media platforms that they received a large amount of hate messages as well as death threads for what they painted.
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Figure 2: Top photos: Sarah Hegazi Mural in Amman. Bottom photos: The Municipality’s response on Twitter
This example shows that the artists are using their right of free speech in public through their work that speaks to people in a different way, to show solidarity and establish a particular language for them to use in order to amplify the strength of a protest or a progressive idea. Artists can also use their pieces to tell a story about oppression and inequality in a way that keeps people informed about topics that most of the local news does not address. Sometimes a number of artists, just as the artist who painted the mural in Figure (2), look the other way when it comes to ‘taboo’ topics such as homosexuality and target the topic straightforwardly without any restrictions with an intention to amplify the message conveyed in order to normalize these topics and make art related to it acceptable (Tripp, 2013).
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This example also reveals that the more the authorities try to destroy any works of art that defy the general status quo, the more it becomes apparent that they “have failed to establish their own version of the truth” (Tripp, 2013) regarding these topics. This exposes the opportunistic and contradictory stance of the authorities, as they on the one hand welcome art (as long as it serves their favored purposes of non-disruptive place-making and city branding), while on the other hand turn against the very same art, condemning and eradicating it in order to appease the conservative groups within society (Tripp, 2013). Nevertheless, when artists use art in public spaces to protest, they pave the way for it to become a space of resistance. Tripp (2013) explains that when people start utilizing public spaces through controversial murals such as the example in figure (2), evidence of resistance is shown which indicates that there is a shift in power and that the current dominant power is resisted (Tripp, 2013). 3.3 Feminism and street art in Amman As mentioned in the previous chapter, the context of graffiti, street art and feminism in the Middle East, and Jordan specifically, is different from Western-centric research results on these topics, especially in regards to gendered participation in these fields of artistic activism. But the similarity between the two sides, Western and Middle Eastern, is that “the subculture of graffiti is similarly unwelcoming to females and femininity” (Pursley, 2012). Whether it is the dominance of men in the field, just as it was depicted in the Western-centric research, or it is the society’s unequal traditions and the social norms in the Middle East, as it was explained in the previous chapters, both sides do not welcome females in the field of graffiti and street art. Nonetheless, female artists are still fighting for their part in the field of street art and graffiti. Graffiti and street art give female artists the chance to claim the public space, to make their presence known and to get the opportunity to change the society (Gentry, 2008). According to Lefebvre (1974), a city can be read on what is written and painted on its walls and public spaces just as you read a text (Lefebvre, 1974). Extrapolating Lefebvre’s thoughts onto the field of street art and graffiti this means that reading a city’s wall art and graffiti is revealing the local socio-cultural structures. The presence of female artists in the streets, and their performative acts of painting and writing on walls also creates a social space for other marginalized women to feel connected to that space through connecting to the delineated struggles (Gentry, 2008). This kind of feminist art helps to expand the gravitas of the artwork beyond its aesthetic features only and make it play a crucial role in impacting the social change dynamics that may lead to changing the lives of disadvantaged people for the better. The possibility of that to take place is partially dependent on the artists because “these artists are 23
frontrunners in the movement to use the arts to address social, economic and political inequities and improve opportunities for all” (Sidford, 2011). Holly Sidford (2011) further elaborates that these artists use their art in order to make the community as diverse as they possibly can and for that society to be able to address the inequalities that cause societal problems. Thus, feminist art “highlight[s] the importance of social connection and work[s] through community” (Millner et al., 2015) by using the art as an ice breaker for the social tension between the genders in order to integrate feminism and women’s rights in the community in a subtle, but artistic way rather than imposing it onto a society that historically has resisted feminism as a perceived Westernizing intrusion into their established traditions and norms. That is why artists in Amman informed Zein Zu’bi (2018) that they need to manage art gradually when targeting topics that are less talked about and are considered a taboo. Sardine, who is an informant for a study by Zu’bi (2018), stated that “there is no value in shock value. If I want to continue what I want to do and what I love, I’ll have to be respectful of the culture”. In conclusion, the goals of Jordanian feminist artists line up with the objectives of feminist critics in art history, that is: “recuperating the experience of women and women artists; critiquing and deconstructing the authority, institutions, and ideologies that created the gender bias; and evaluating the traditional cultural and psychological roles assigned and demonstrated by women” (Pursley, 2012, p.57). Millner et al. (2015) discussed how their community in Australia employed the tool of feminist art and history reading circles in order to inspire their art and to establish a link between activism and feminist art. They also realized that women in societies are being underrepresented in the arts field in general. If this would have been introduced in Jordan it might, in the long run, also change how society looks at female artists and might achieve the tip of the social change that needs to be happening towards equality and feminism. The previous chapter mentioned the existence of women’s organizations in Jordan that target the achievement of women’s rights and feminism and their inability to enforce a political change in order to make the lives of marginalized women better. An interviewee in Ferguson (2017) said that “if you want to be effective, social movements are important but they need political support, even a coalition with political parties or being more active in politics yourself….This is one major obstacle”. Another interviewee in Ferguson (2017) said that, what women need is “more coordination and consistency” because what they do in these organizations is 24
scheduling meetings with officials to discuss different issues and these organizations have to negotiate and compromise and in the end will not get what they want. She mentioned an example on how the government will listen to their demands is shaped by what is happening in the streets, not in meeting rooms. This is where the role of the artists becomes vital, as they are not bound to any specific organizations and therefore, use their art to trigger social movements so that these movements might have a chance to build a ground for social change. To summarize this chapter, the concept of social change can be applied in many different fields but in the context of this thesis, social change is targeting the ideas and social movements in a society in order to change norms and tradition from one state to another. The content of this chapter is also going to assess the application of the methodology explained in the next chapter in order to come to a conclusion whether the discussed concept of social change is taking place in the Jordanian society from the perspective of artists, people and the municipality or not. The examples of the Sarah Hegazi’s mural and the ‘Break the Silence’ mural mentioned in this chapter gave an introductory overview of the situation in Jordan. But the next chapters are going to put emphasis on the general public and the artists.
Chapter (4): Methodology In the following chapter, an introduction to the methodology applied is going to be provided as well as a discussion of the limitations. This thesis uses a multimethod approach in order to gather different inputs and data. This multimethod research includes documents, observations, and interviews (Salmons, 2015). Both interviews and surveys are used in this thesis in order to gather primary data to analyze in order to reach a reliable result. The other method that is used is the iconography and iconology for the interpretations of the survey.
This methodology can be classified as a visual ethnographic research because it employs one of the most classical ethnographic methods, which is interviews but at the same time it is called ‘visual’ ethnographic research because it addresses the analysis of visual (Hamdy, 2015). In this type of research, as Hamdy (2015) noted that “the visual material is treated as evidence supporting a particular hypothesis on the meanings that the visuals elicited in their original context”. Hamdy’s (2015) argument indicates that the murals that are analyzed in this thesis will help support the thesis’ hypothesis.
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4.1 Interviews In order to gather as much elaborative data as possible, interviews were chosen as one of the methods to gather information from both graffiti and street artists as well as the municipality. Qualitative data was collected in order to gather as many opinions, points of view, and insights as possible from the informants. Quantitative data was not used due to the lack of statistical facts on the topic of street art and graffiti in Jordan. The interviews were conducted using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technologies (Lo Iacono, Symonds and Brown, 2016) such as Skype and Facebook, as well as other internet research methods (Biber, 2012 as cited in Lo Iacono et al. 2016) such as email correspondence, WhatsApp texting and voice recording. The interviews with the artists were semi-structured, i.e. an interview guide with key questions was formulated (see appendix 1), but the actual course of the interview was structured by the informants, allowing ad hoc excuses and follow-up questions, depending on discourses touched upon and emphasized by the interviewees themselves. The interviews were conducted with three graffiti artists in Jordan, Haneen Khamaiseh Maha Hinidi and Laila Ajjawi, with the latter two also participating in the Baladk Street Art Festival. All of them also exhibit independent works outside of any organized project or festivals. The informant from the municipality was Shayma’a Al-Tal from the culture department. The interview with the municipality was structured because they requested the interview guide and their answers were sent via WhatsApp voice recording without the possibility for any extra or follow up questions (see appendix 2). This request was required because of the time constraints the informant had and the lack of other municipality employees in the culture department nowadays due to COVID-19. A total of 13 invites were sent to artists, municipality employees and people from the Baladk Project. Two of them could not participate, four answered and seven did not reply. Two of the interviews were conducted in Arabic, with a translated version of the interview guide, and the other two were conducted in English. Later on, the transcription was translated by the author from Arabic to English in order to use it in the analysis. The interviews were thematically analyzed, which, according to Braun and Clarke (2006) can be defined as “a method for identifying, analyzing, and reporting patterns (themes) within data. It minimally organizes and describes [the] data set in (rich) detail”. After the identification of recurring themes in the interviews, these were categorized in order to make them comparable to one another, as well as applicable to the theoretical framework.
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4.2 Survey Furthermore, a survey featuring 7 pictures of murals around Amman was conducted. This tool was used in order to investigate whether the general public would decipher the intended meanings behind the artworks or not. The survey was distributed on Facebook groups as well as sent out to individuals and they also sent it to others in order to get as many responses as possible and through different ages and genders. A sample of 67 responses was received from random people in Jordan over different age groups (see survey in appendix 3). The methodology used to analyze the responses, iconography and iconology is “both a method and an approach to studying the content and meanings of visuals” as Müller (2011) explained. Traditionally, iconography and iconology were mainly applied to classic paintings in order to classify them into particular themes but more recent applications of this method have shown that it also can be used as “an analytical method of visual content analysis” (Müller, 2011). Iconography and iconology can be defined as “a qualitative method of visual content analysis and interpretation, influenced by cultural traditions and guided by research interests originating both in the humanities and the social sciences” (Müller, 2011). Müller also indicated that this method has potential to clarify and comprehend a better understanding of any mediated visuals as well as its ability to unravel how people interpret a piece of art and its relation to culture. He described it as a “forensic method” (Müller, 2011) as well as a method, in which different pieces are put together in order to understand the complete picture of an art piece and its relations to the period and the place it was produced in. Müller (2011) also identified iconology as “qualitative method aimed at the interpretation of visual content. Rooted both in art history and sociology, the method has the potential to better understand and explain the meanings of contemporary mass mediated visuals” (Müller, 2011). The method that is used in this thesis is adapted from Erwin Panofsky (1955), as seen in Figure 3, and it consists of three stages in order to analyze a piece of art and reveal the meaning behind it.
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Figure 3: Visual Interpretation by Panofsky, E. (1955). Meaning in the Visual Arts. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Those three visual interpretation steps are: Pre-iconographical description, iconographical analysis, and iconological interpretation. They are explained as follows:
1. Pre-iconographical description: As depicted in Figure 3, Panofsky (1955) labelled this stage as Primary or natural subject matter, which is apprehended by the person’s identification of “pure form” which consists of colors, lines, shapes as well as the depictions of natural objects just like animals, humans, plants, et cetera. This also includes acknowledging postures and gestures. Müller (2011) described this step as an attempt to see a visual “in a most neutral way, avoiding too early attributions of meaning”. For this first step, Panofsky described the matter as simple because “everybody can recognize the shape and behavior of human beings, animals and plants, and everybody can tell an angry face from a jovial one” (Panofsky, 1955). By spotting these natural subject matters, we are using our “practical experience” (Panofsky, 1955) in order to literally read what we see. 2. Iconographical analysis: Building up on the pre-iconographical description is the iconographical analysis. After acknowledging the simple matter of art, the 28
analysis of the piece starts. This stage results in combining the elements and motifs from the first step with specific concepts and themes. Panofsky (1955) called the secondary meaning that is acquired in this stage as images, a combination of images, stories, and allegories. That means that by identifying them, the beholder receives the idea of it and not just “the concrete and individual persons or objects” such as a human or a bird but to understand the “abstract and the general notion” (Panofsky, 1955) of an image for example freedom, wisdom, peace, et cetera. Here the understanding of symbols or personification is important. Iconography here is centered on the subject matter of an image rather than its form. This means that the subject matter that is now associated with abstract concepts and themes is opposed to the primary/natural subject matter. 3. Iconological interpretation: Panofsky (1955) describes this step as a “mental faculty” and compared it to a diagnosis to what he calls “synthetic intuition”, also referred to as “common sense” (Rose, 2016), which is basically “the general and the essential tendencies of the human mind were expressed by specific themes and concepts”. Müller (2011) called this step the “crowning” step as well as the “ultimate goal” because “the method gives access to processes of meaning construction and meaning attribution of particular groups and motifs of pictures” (Müller, 2011). What is important to note here is that an explanation of any visual image is not fully provided, unlike in the first two stages, in which the elements observed are socio-culturally learnt and acquired, meaning that the explanation of an image is based on the person’s intuition when looking at an image (Panofsky, 1955).
Thus, iconography, which represents the first two stages, centers around identifying the natural subject matter, motifs and meaning behind any visual, while iconology, which is represented in the final stage, is depending on the former two stages in order to expand the scope of the visuals to evidences of political, cultural and social analysis while considering the temporal, locational and casual contexts it was produced in.
Those two methods, the interviews, and the survey, were used in order to collect primary data. Additionally, complimentary secondary data was collected online, through the scoping and analysis of posts on the social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram. This allowed for a wider sample of artworks selected, as well as a more thorough insight into the artists' intentions and the public's reception of the respective works, due to an analysis of the dialogue among these parties in the comment sections
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of the postings. This additional analysis also allowed for a comparison to primary data gathered via the survey.
4.2 Limitation Initially, these interviews were supposed to be conducted in person in Amman, Jordan but due to the current situations under COVID-19, this was not possible. Likewise, the survey substituted in situ observations and dialogues with passers-by.
Also, the sample size that was collected from the informants is small to be representative for the whole situation in Jordan but due to the novelty of this art field, rich data was collected, nonetheless.
Chapter (5): Analysis 5.1 Interview analysis Chapter 2 explained the situation of both feminism and graffiti in Jordan and how they are both affected by the political processes and socio-cultural traditions. All three artists interviewed confirmed the current socio-political climate in Jordan as described above. Reactions to their artwork consisted either of being stopped in the streets and getting critically confronted by people, or impediment of their artistic careers by societal or familial pressure. Maha Hindi explained that by talking about a mural she painted 5 years ago, which represented a scale with four figures of men and women on each side and each of them is having the same job as the other (Figure 10). Two of the figures, female and male, are holding a baby and she said that this was a little bit critical for people and used to ask, “why is the man holding a baby?” She also explained that a man came to her and told her that what she was painting is wrong because he thought that a man’s only job is to provide money. Whereas Haneen Khamaiseh said that: “In the beginning I was facing some barriers. I, myself, my parents in the past, they were against the idea of me going to the street and paint murals on walls. They used to say that you have to stand in the street and in front of people and so on…” Even though her parents accepted the idea, other parents have not as it become apparent after she opened a gallery in the city of Aqaba in the south of Jordan, and she explains: “But now, the males and females in my team are facing the same thing. Sometimes even the male artists, their parents do not want them to go paint with female artists, for female artists, their parents will not allow them to go paint outside with other male artists” 30
Over time and with familiarization with this type of art, many people got used to this type of art and got used to seeing artists, especially female artists, in the street. Maha said that nowadays people stop by and ask her about the mural and discuss it. She also added that she hears more and more encouraging words from people. Another artist, Laila Ajjawi, said that now people stop by and offer her something to drink and eat while painting or even offer to help. Laila also stated that: “I do really see comment, pretty comments, people who get a taste to art, people who discuss the idea, people who add something to the idea. I always make a conversation behind or why I am drawing. I make people always engaged with my process, so I get something from them and that is the main thing”
Maha also added: “They used to speak up, they use to… yeah it’s like a very unfamiliar thing, like why are you drawing women? Or why do you focus of women? Or why do you choose… why do you say that if you empower a woman that means she will build a society…” But she clarified that once she had a conversation with them, they became more open to the idea. Haneen Khamaiseh also shared the same opinion saying that in the beginning it was weird for people to see female artists in the streets and it was like a scene for them but now after seeing graffiti everywhere and also the fact that organizations started using graffiti tactically to advertise or raise awareness, they do not stop anymore and they do not care who is painting the murals. In the theoretical framework, 6 components were mentioned that social change targets and the two main points that this thesis is focusing on are the interrelation among elements and the functions of elements in the system as a whole (Sztompka, 1993). By having had graffiti and street art in Amman for almost a decade, the relationship between the artists and the public developed, either positively or negatively, nonetheless there was a development. The direct confrontation of the artists by people, may it be in a critical or supportive way, illustrates that kind of development. In that, the first change component, a change in the structure of a society, which consists of the emergence of new equalities and new relationships as Sztompka (1993) indicated, have marginally started to set on. The second component, which is the function of the elements as a whole system, is explained by the fact that these artists do not only play the role of the graffiti artists, but also take up a stance in explaining their messages and values behind their work to the general public. Thereby, an interest for the matter might be sparked, potentially leading to a broader critical reflection process about the unequal gender norms and structures. On that note, Maha explained that
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every time someone confronts her with their opinion, she aims for turning the encounter into a reasonable discussion, establishing a relationship and a dialogue. In that way, she aspires to raise awareness about her work and motifs. Hence, she argues: “ I don’t believe [that] feminism, or women empowerment to cancel the other gender, it is just she is so discriminated [against] and she is strong enough and she is enough to take over and to have a bigger role in society”. Furthermore, she pointed out that, along the course of these dialogues, she frequently experienced people opening up to her ideas and values, which she deemed to be a momentous effect of her work. This also causes a change in the functions of a society (Sztompka, 1993) because of the different roles the artists have to play in order to address and raise awareness to this type of change they are targeting. This development between the artists and the people also supports Sztompka’s (1993) theory on change that targets the social dynamics of a society for the sake of triggering the development and progress of a society in order to move from a previous social thinking to a new social thinking. Meanwhile, the municipality is impeding the artists’ work. In order to get a mural authorized, the artist has to present a sketch to a board, which decides whether a suggestion is being approved, approved conditionally (given adjustments are made) or rejected entirely. Maha reported that, at the beginning artists needed to get one permit, but now they added another one which is called “Amman’s Municipality Permit”. This means that the artist first needs to get a permit from the property owner, followed by the jury’s approval for the sketch in order to paint it. When she was asked, if she ever submitted a sketch and got rejected, she said “yes, a million times”. She explained by saying: “because what they had in mind, they wanted a thing that expresses… that is still related to the Jordanian elements, because like they used to ask about the color scheme, like why is there no flags, why don’t you use the flag colors and things. And the second one, I wanted to draw a woman figure, not nude, but [ a shaped figure] and they thought it is going to be a little bit critical and the society isn’t really ready for it yet”
As mentioned in the background chapter, most Jordanians grew up seeing public art that is related to Jordanian elements, for instance the flag, the monarchy, the army, et cetera. Hence, even after allowing the new art form of graffiti and street art, the government is still trying to associate it with the same traditional public art from before. The artists must follow ‘unspoken rules’ about the country and its costumes and traditions, coined by the artist Sardine as the Heritage Factor (Zu’bi, 2018). The municipality argues for a series of conditions that the artists must meet in order for a
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submission to be allowed as a painting on a wall. On that matter, Shayma’a Al-Tal from the culture department explained: “the conditions that we agree upon the murals must be within appropriate standards for positive societal concepts and carry cheerful and creative colors that work to add a quality to the city”.
Another artist, Laila Ajjawi, talked about her experience with having a sketch being rejected by the municipality because it displayed the face of a woman:
“They asked me to remove the girl from the mural because of some kind of social things, well I thought in the first place this is some kind of [stupid] thing to do. Why would you delete a woman from the wall…? When I was drawing, many men they stopped by and they like you know, they are having the religious look about it, like why are you painting women on the wall?” The solution that she had to come up with for this problem was to keep the composition as it is but she had to add another elderly male figure, just like the ones who stopped her. However, even after “fixing” it, she had to reach out for support to pressure the municipality into issuing her the permit before having her piece approved. A similar conflict arose for another project of hers in Amman, where she got the permit for the sketch but when she finished it, the next day, the municipality removed it. Until now, she does not know the exact reason behind the removal, but she suspects the reason being the content displayed. In that regard, the municipality stated that, “sometimes some of the murals are removed, if there has been a complaint…”. This entails that it is highly possible that if someone finds the murals offensive, the municipality acts upon that complaint without taking into account the artists’ intentions. This explains the example of what Laila had to go through when she found that her mural was removed. This also supports Tripp’s (2013) claims that the municipality’s act in Laila’s case is a proof that the government is obsessed “about the public expression of dissonant and subversive messages and their fear of the power of art”. It also reveals the authorities’ anxiety and vulnerability over the power of art and its ability to “determine resistance” (Tripp, 2013). Laila also mentioned another mural that she painted in a refugee camp in the city of Irbid in the north of Jordan of a woman’s face. She painted it to raise awareness on women’s dreams for the girls in the camp and she noticed that the girls in the camp started writing their names on the mural, which was surprising for Laila as she felt that it is making a difference for these girls. She explained that these girls, in their own way, spoke through the mural and that is a courageous thing to do.
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Figure 4: Mural in Refugee Camp in Irbid
In Tripp’s (2013) words, the artists thereby help to build what is he called a “visual vocabulary”. These young girls did not only find a “new way of looking at the world” but also found a way “of representing half-remembered things, perhaps long suppressed. They help to create a powerful mnemonic for collective memory and to establish a presence that demands recognition” (Tripp, 2013). Tripp further elaborates that this type of new vocabulary is troubling for the groups believing otherwise, because it entails
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that their “suppression of alternatives” (Tripp, 2013) is in jeopardy. This might explain why Laila’s mural was extremely vandalized by the conservative groups without even the permission of the UNRWA, the organization responsible for the camp, or the municipality. These cases show that even when these individuals or street artists got the chance to break free from the social norms and traditions and used their art to disseminate their values and beliefs to the general public, their scope of action was still limited. That is because “state authorities have always concerned themselves with the behaviour of their subjects and citizens, male and female, especially when that behaviour seems to deviate from existing social norms” (Tripp, 2013). This supports the fact that the municipality authorized street art and graffiti and gave the artists the spaces to express themselves but at the same time, still adheres to the conservative wishes, protecting traditional social norms and custom laws. Hearing those stories and the approaches the artists applied in dealing with street art and graffiti as well as the type of messages they are trying to deliver to the society, makes the artists the initiators, who bring art to “the realization of urban society [and] its long meditation on life as drama and pleasure” (Lefebvre, 1996). Lefebvre explained that it is the duty of the social forces, in this case the graffiti and street artists, to create art that is relevant to the urban society in order to make the images they are trying to convey effective and efficient in order to unite art with knowledge (Lefebvre, 1996). By doing that, graffiti and street artists place their ideas of a utopian future on walls and allow their art to be utilized in order to make that future a reality. This implies that the artist’s “action would thus be both utopian and realistic” (Lefebvre, 1996). According to Sztompka (1993), change in the society, it concerns the differences that we can make between the situation in the past or now and the situation after that change or in the future. He called this process social progress, which aspires to bring the society to the preferred state that was shaped throughout different utopias represented on the walls of the city. He defined progress in this case as a representation of how the society should look like. Laila Ajjawi states that whenever she wants to draw women on walls, she always depicts them as strong and capable women without showing vulnerability. When she submitted sketches for the Break the Silence campaign, she noted that she did not want to show the woman’s weaknesses because she is a survivor of a crime. In a sense, she always wants to paint perfect murals that show a better future, hoping that it will become real one day.
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In that way graffiti constantly reminds people of the ideal future and what is at stake as well as what needs to be changed because “graffiti makes the revolts immediate, as part of ‘today’ and not a matter of ‘yesterday’” (Taş, 2017).
5.2 Survey analysis This part of the thesis will analyze the survey responses through the method of iconography and iconology in order to investigate whether the general public actually comprehends the intentions behind the murals or sometimes the hidden meaning they carry. According to the artists, when asked if they think that the people are able to look beyond the aesthetic and decipher the actual meaning of the artwork, their responses were mostly affirmative, as Laila Ajjawi explained:
“You will be surprised to know that people here are, the public people let’s say, can’t go to art galleries and have better art taste than those who go. Sometimes, I do really see comments, pretty comments, people who get a taste to art, people who discuss the idea, people who add something to the idea”
Haneen Khamaiseh’s point of view also corresponds with Laila’s thought by saying that “some people are not exposed to art at all and the first art they might get exposed to is graffiti and street art and it might be the gate for them to get involved” Maha Hindi also noted on the same topic that “now it is getting completely the right attention and the right understanding” In order to confirm the previously mentioned artists’ claims that the people are able to decipher the meaning behind their murals, the survey will help in finding that out. Figure 5 and Figure 6 will show the age and gender distributions of the survey:
Figure 5: Age groups
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Figure 6: Gender
Analysis According to Panofsky (1955) the first step which is the pre-iconographical description is known to everyone, meaning that anyone who looks at an image or a painting or a mural will immediately accomplish the first step. According to the survey, every response gave at least a simple explanation to what they see in the mural. For example, the first mural in the survey was of a young little girl, with her eyes closed and birds flying out of her head.
Figure 7: Mural titled “IMAGINE” 37
Respondents had shown in their responses that they acknowledge that there is a girl, birds, and a shadow. Their responses were as follows: “children are by nature peaceful”, while another respondent explained it as “freedom for little girls”, “I love birds” as well as “children’s thoughts”. Their responses prove Panofsky’s understanding of the first and the second stages which are the pre-iconographical description and iconographical analysis, being intertwined. People immediately started to decipher the meaning of the symbols in the murals such as linking the birds to freedom and imaginations. A total of 31 people explained this mural according to the symbols in it and then relied on their experience with these symbols in order to understand the meaning of the mural. According to Panofsky (1955), the final stage consists of understanding the ultimate meaning of the art, which is influenced by someone’s culture, time, social and political situations. In this case, 18 responses in total reflected the artist’s intended meaning. These responses went beyond the aesthetics and the meaning of symbols and reached the meaning that is connected to the actual reality that this mural was painted in. Some of these responses were: “Seeing that beautiful painting, makes me think that the lady is setting her mind free, she is not a typical thinker” and “Freeing your mind or soul out of the box such as traditions” as well as “I like it, I think the hairstyle is very representative of Arab women and I think the doves refer to peace so in a painting women are essential for peace” and “I had the idea of a girl that no one can stop and she is able to go in every direction and shine”. However, not every mural was met with the same level of recognition as this one. The tribute to Nemat Al-Mufti as seen in Figure 8, which consisted of a colorful woman’s face that was painted as a tribute for Nemat Al Mufti, a Jordanian advocate and activist for women’s rights, who was one of the first women to demand justice for women in Jordan as well as demand more rights to young girls such as education, leading her to build schools and community centers for them.
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Figure 8 Tribute to Nimat Al-Mufti. Mural by Suhaib Attar
The respondents’ interpretations for this mural did not meet the intended meaning of the mural and almost all of the responses did not exceed the second step, iconographical analysis. 36 people did not decipher any deeper meaning beyond the aesthetic and their responses were mainly descriptive adjectives such as “beautiful woman”, “colorful or colorful woman” and “a good-looking woman with jewelry” et cetera. Only three responses said that they think it is someone famous, but they could not tell who she was. What was interesting about this mural is that even though people didn’t know who she was, some still linked the mural to feminism and women’s rights, which confirms Panofsky theorization on a person’s interpretation being affected by their surroundings, culture and their own experiences with what they saw in the mural. Some of the responses that used the “synthetic Intuition”, which is the iconological interpretation represented in Panofsky’s last stage, were: “Regardless of how colorful it is, I always feel that she's not happy and these are the colors of her experiences in life, some she chose and some she didn't”. Another respondent said, “Different colors = different personal challenges that women face and make them feel helpless sometimes” And another elaborated: “A picture that gives hope, very colorful. I think the random lines give me the feeling that although life can be in so many directions, but it can be also colorful. The narrow black lines make the picture look like a puzzle, that was broken but it
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was fixed. It shows us that a broken woman (represented as a puzzle) can collect her pieces and still be colorful” In that regard, Tripp (2013) noted that “the effects of the art of resistance” can be linked to the reactions or experiences people might have when seeing that art. It might remind them of memories, or it might get a different reaction from those who felt threatened by what is being represented. Another mural that received similar responses to the aforementioned one, was a piece painted for the purpose of safety in public transportations as seen in Figure (9)
Figure 9: Mural about safety in public transportation by Dire
The deciphering of this mural’s intention proved equally difficult, as only 2 people linked it to safety in public transportation but at the same time many different interpretations were influenced depending on the person’s background, experience, and culture. Some responses were: “The mural indicates the need for peace and freedom by Arab women or Jordanian women”. One other interpretation illustrated that: “A woman is mighty and has an indescribable strength. Many women have defended issues despite their difficulty and been imprisoned and tortured for a cause ..., and there are women imprisoned in their homes and shined from behind the grip of backwardness and ignorance” A possible reason for respondents failing to link the mural to public transportation safety may be linked to the fact that public transportation in Jordan is not used by most
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of the population and people rather use cars instead of buses. This might have affected their knowledge or experience when interpreting the mural, since it is not common. One mural presented in the survey stood in the fact that every respondent interpreted its meaning in correspondence with the artist’s intended meaning. In particular, everyone got the same intentions of the artists themselves. As seen in Figure 10, the mural, by Maha Hindi, represents a scale, with 4 male figures and 4 female figures, depicting the same professions.
Figure 10: Equality by Maha Hindi
For this mural, all the responses achieved the last step of Panofsky’s method, because people acknowledged that there are males and females, that there is a scale, which represents the pre-iconographical description. Then they linked the scale to something being equal, which represents the iconographical analysis and then they interpreted it according to the cultural situation in the country and described the mural as representing equality between men and women and the equality in professions when it comes to tasks and pay.
In the survey people were asked if they think that street art can be used as a tool to trigger social change in the future and 58.2% answered yes, while 10.4 % said no and 34.3% answered by maybe (Figure 11). 41
Figure 11 Percentage of people’s opinion on social change through street art
They were also asked if they would like to elaborate more on their answers which 21 respondents chose to do.
Those who answered yes, think that graffiti and street art is the right tool to present and convey some types of messages that trigger cultural and traditional issues such as honor killing, women’s rights, and corruption. They think that graffiti and street art help the society to take a second look on these issues and maybe fight against them. Some respondents shared the idea that street art and graffiti is an excellent way of communicating with people. One said: “I think that art is a way of communicating with people, a way into a culture, a language that different people of different ethnicities can speak”. Nour (2017) said that murals are considered as a communication tool that go beyond time and space and through these murals, artists can communicate their ideas to the public and the society. She further adds: “mural painting, especially in public areas or as a street art, has doubled the effects on people and societies” (Nour, 2017). One respondent theorized that people nowadays do not read as much as before or will not have the time to read about these topics, so when they see them in their streets and neighborhoods, they will have to look at it and they will interpret it without putting too much work into it. Another respondent agreed that street art and graffiti can contribute to changing the society to the better, even though it will take time, because those unequal traditions and norms are taught through generations and the next generation. They believed that sometimes “solutions come in the easiest ways” and maybe graffiti is
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that easy way to solve these problems. Another response stated that “What goes around comes around, we shape our city and the city shape[s] us” meaning that if these artists are shaping the city by painting murals that are meaningful in nature and especially ones that target critical topics, the city might eventually shape people’s minds and thoughts for the better. The respondents who stated to not believe in street art and graffiti as a tool for social change based their point of view was based on their assumption that these murals are just a mere reflection of the artists’ mind. Another person said that they failed to get the messages behind the murals, and that they see graffiti and street art as a visual pollution and nothing more. Another person explained that people in Jordan are blinded by their tradition and will not be able to change their mentality and traditions and norms by just looking at murals around the city. The respondents who answered “maybe” still thought that graffiti is a good way to affect people’s way of thinking but it will take more than murals to change a society that is holding tight to their traditions and cultural backgrounds. One said: “I think it would take more than just graffiti to lead a social change in our society, since the diverse cultural backgrounds of people, these artistic illustrations may mean little to nothing for some, but it would play a good role and hopefully have an impact to change for the better, not to mention that art work can deeply affect the way one thinks in his/her subconsciousness”
Another person had the same point of view by saying:
“It depends. Of course, it can be a wakeup call to some people but sometimes there are habits/traditions that are very ingrained in areas like Jordan. So, when it comes to big issues (ex. the recent event of honor killing that occurred) graffiti would certainly be a helping factor as it shows that the society no longer tolerates such behaviors (considering the graffiti was well designed). Especially because some people, live off of society’s approval. Nonetheless, it is not the only action that needs to be taken”
They also shared the idea that some of the messages behind these murals are hard to understand. One said about the murals that they “could be perceived as aesthetically pleasing which might not trigger certain feelings to start a social movement in our very stubborn society... we need clear direct simple messages”. If graffiti and street art is being used to raise awareness to people about critical topics in the society, it needs to be clear and easy to understand in order to involve as many people as possible. But according to the results from the interview, being simple and going right to the point
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might lead to the removal of the murals. On that note, Nour (2017) explained that street art and graffiti should not be offensive or cross the line of a society because then it will be considered psychological vandalism (Nour, 2017). The graffiti artist Lady Pink said “public work has a responsibility […] It has to be family friendly; you have to take the community into consideration” (Lady Pink (n.d.), as cited in Nour, 2017). What the respondents in the survey said might be reasonable, that a mural should be direct and cut right to the point but in a society as Jordan, that might have a negative effect on the mural, the artist and the cause/message behind the mural. To put it in the words of Nour (2017) these murals have to be in a “a non-provocative tone, otherwise the result shall be the opposite of what they wanted…”
Chapter 5: Results and discussion According to the analysis of the interviews and the survey, it can be verified that street art and graffiti have had some effect on the society in Jordan, whether it was intended such as the right interpretations of the murals or it was unintended where people connected the murals to other cases and problems they might see relevant or linked to their own experiences and knowledge. Tripp (2013) said that even if the artists’ effort is to attempt to raise some questions that might make people reassess the status quo, just as Haneen Khamaiseh said in the interview “I want to affect and leave my mark not in everything but in specific topics that are needed to be talked about, which can benefit me and benefit the society”, the people’s reception might change depending on how they perceive the aesthetic of a mural. This will depend on what the public “bring to their encounter with a work of visual art, literature or film in terms of tastes shaped by their own backgrounds, as well as by their personal preferences” (Tripp, 2013). Lefebvre (1996) also shared this point of view on that matter, stating that “the city receives and emits messages. These messages are or are not understood (that is, are or are not coded or decoded)”. Thus, people might choose to decipher a mural or not, or they might be able to decode it or they might not. That will depend on the person and their background and what they stand for. Accordingly, Haneen confirmed that “it depends on the person if they want to get involved in this art and be affected by it or not”. Another result from the survey is that most of the respondents agreed on the fact that graffiti and street art might be a successful new method to affect people’s mindsets or at least let them think about the message behind the mural. Communicating with the artists might help to understand the intended message and the reason for it, but that is not the case in Jordan. It is difficult for the general public to get in touch with the artists, despite many of them having social media presence, because featured artists selected by the municipality remain unnamed on the official projects’ websites. When the 44
municipality was asked about the artists’ involvement in the ‘Jordan: The next art destination’ project, they did not give a clear answer but they confirmed that there is no specific website from the municipality for graffiti artists, adding that if people want to see the murals they can find them on Google Maps. However, there are different websites from different organizations as well as different pages on social media platforms that advertise these murals. The issue lies in the fact that these websites and platforms are not well advertised in order to involve and inform people as much as possible. There are two sides to the impact of social media on the spreading of graffiti and street art within society. One the one hand, social media helps to magnify the power of graffiti and it also plays a crucial role in intensifying the mass of a movement (Bakin, 2013, as cited in Taş, 2017). Furthermore, it helps to document the demolished murals which were either removed by the municipality or vandalized by the conservative groups. On the other hand, however, even if social media helps the spread of graffiti, not everyone can find it on these platforms. Karim Gouda, a graffiti artist in Egypt, said that graffiti and street art “reaches the poor, the rich, the trash collector, the taxi driver […] most of these people are away from the Internet and the social networking world, so it’s a way to reach them” (“Egyptians move to reclaim streets through graffiti”, 2012). Taş (2017) also stated that “graffiti in major streets enjoys high public exposure and serves as a form of citizen journalism that visualizes political [and social] punchlines”. Similarly, Nour (2017) confirmed that “graffiti as a street art is instant and responsive, more engaged with the people and the events in a direct way”. That is understandable, since these murals are painted on tall buildings, tunnels, walls, et cetera., where they are visible for everyone to see. Hamdy (2015) also said that graffiti unites the people and it challenges the observer “to ask questions and point towards ideas that the mainstream media cannot dare to address. Only the wall has the power to reach the minds of everyday people passing by”. A further noteworthy finding was that even though people thought that graffiti is a successful method to initiate social change, they did not think that it can be self- sufficient, which means that other changes must occur alongside graffiti in order for societal change to happen. The municipality also agreed that graffiti can be a tool for changing society but said that it “in this case is a soft tool for change. The other tool is the legal tool, where a change in the laws and the legal system is required, which will benefit the society”. Sztompka (1993) also explained that there is a possibility for one action, graffiti and street art in this case, to target and initiate change in different components in the society but not the entire social system at once. This leads to the necessity of including aspects of political processes into the considerations on social change, because in order for the targeted change to occur, a change in the ideas and 45
beliefs needs to happen that eventually might lead to social movements through graffiti. But also, in order to achieve social change, political interventions are necessary for revising and instating new laws and regulations, which is often one of the main reasons why people will demand change in the first place.
Moreover, the municipality's authoritative intrusion of the street art scene, by removing pieces deemed as inappropriate, demonstrates and perpetuates the municipality's social control, aiming to render artistic practices apolitical and preventing the provocation of wider socio-political dynamics that might question the status-quo (Ferguson, 2017). This also shows that in Jordan there is no existing system that protects graffiti and street art’s ‘artistic heritage’ and that graffiti and street art in Jordan is perceived as something temporary and not lasting due to the simplicity in the removal of murals (Zu'bi, 2018). To conclude, Figure 12 will show the types of social change that can eventually lead to socio-cultural evolution.
Micro Level Group Level (groups or Macro Level (over all (individual) organizations community)
Short term Behavior change Change in norms Policy change change
Long term Lifestyle change Organizational change Socio-cultural evolution change
Figure 12: Types of social change by time and level. Adapted from Levy and Zaltman (1975)1
According to Figure (12), prerequisite stages have to be met in order for the evolution of social and cultural aspects, and ultimately social change in general, to occur. On that note, Sztompka (1993) elaborated that regarding a social system as a whole includes different fragments, aspects, and dimensions of it. In order for these to contribute to change in a wider sense, minor changes in these have to work together. On that matter he clarifies that “the overall state of the system is not simple, one- dimensional, but rather emerges as the combined, aggregated results of the state as various components” (Sztompka, 1993). Applying the scheme depicted in Figure 12 onto the findings, it can be stated that short term changes are taking place right now in the society. Individuals are changing their perspectives when approaching murals by looking beyond the aesthetics and linking them to their own experiences and demands. This
1 Cited in Brennan, L. (2008). Concepts in Conflict: Social Marketing and Sustainability. Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing, 20, 261-281. 10.1080/10495140802224951.
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also leads to a change in the group level due to the fact that the general public is now more familiar with these artworks and they are more accepting when seeing murals of women and female artists in the streets. Nonetheless, it can be assessed that still more time and further minor prerequisite changes are needed in order to achieve social change on a macro level, i.e. changes in policies. Following that a continuity in short term changes might eventually accomplish wider change in the long-term.
Chapter (7): Conclusion Throughout this thesis, the situation of graffiti and street art in Jordan was presented and how the rise of it was affected by both, the state and traditions. This has been shown through how the situation for murals and artists unraveled throughout the rejection artists faced from the municipality by declining their sketches as well as the disagreement from conservative groups that did not give the chance for the murals to be presented to the city. This resulted into the fact that some artists stepped back from trying to paint murals that target some critical topics, such as Sardine who stepped back from painting controversial murals and started painting robots and planes because his previous artworks were vandalized by conservative groups (Zu’bi, 2018). This led to a split in Jordanian community, where one side is trying to prevent graffiti and street art from being political, targeting traditions or portraying sensitive topics that might anger the general public. While the other side is challenging those attempts by painting murals, with or without the municipality’s permission, in order to tell a story of victims or to spread images of resistance and strength to the marginalized groups in the society in order to show solidarity and empower them. But despite the various interventions from the municipality and the conservative groups to prevent that from happening, it did not stop many other artists to attempt bringing these murals up on walls for the whole city to see. It showed women that there are people out there thinking about their rights and it showed girls to speak up, be bold and strong in a society such as the Jordanian one. Through graffiti and street art women and girls will also learn that “hiding the problem is not going to solve it, but discussing it can” (Nour, 2017). Results from the analysis showed that the artists are trying their best to please the people and the municipality but at the same time trying to fight for those who are disadvantaged, such as women. Furthermore, they are aspiring to leave a mark in the minds of people in order to change their perspective on sensitive topics in the Jordanian society. The artists confirmed that they see a clear change between a couple of years ago and now, when presenting critical topics to the city through walls. They reported a
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change in behavior among the general public when seeing female artists painting and when seeing murals that are expressing demands on equality and women’s rights.
The survey revealed that most of the respondents either understood the meaning behind a mural and thought it was relevant to the situation in the city, or interpreted the murals according to their own experiences and personal histories, which also indicates that even though they did not decipher the intended message behind the mural, they still linked it to their personal issues and therefore it affected them in their own way. That can be argued to be the whole purpose behind graffiti and street art: resonating with different people, as personal experiences and associations based upon these are subjective.
To conclude, the question on whether graffiti and street art can serve as a tool to pave a path for change in the society and law and thereby facilitate the eradication of dynamics of gender inequality can be affirmed to some extent.
However, it is still too early to predict the future course of graffiti and street art discourse in Jordan. Nevertheless, the way that the public is approaching street art and graffiti has changed from 7 years ago when this art was first introduced to the Jordanian society. This indicates progress and that it did create a path for freedom when it comes to women painting in the streets alongside men. It also showed that people nowadays try to understand what the meaning behind the mural is rather than just consider the aesthetic aspect only.
Therefore, graffiti and street art might be a possible driver for social change in the future, but not on its own. A combination of having more murals addressing critical topics, a change in people’s behavior towards those murals and eventually change in policies and law is needed, in order to recognize the artists and to give the messages a chance to be heard. Change in the components of a social system is possible, as it was evident from the examples discussed in the analysis. However, the differences in interests and ideologies between the general public and the artists as drivers of change need to be bridged further.
7.1 Future research Graffiti and street art did not only target the social aspect of the society but other aspects as well. Different organizations are implementing beautification projects all over the kingdom in order to embellish the dull infrastructures of cities in Jordan. In cities that attempt to boost their tourism sector, such as Aqaba, located by the seaside in the South of Jordan, street art and graffiti is much more requested by the hospitality
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industry, rather than by the municipality itself. This can also lead to a future investigation on how commercialization strategies from various industries impact the de-/politicization of this art form.
These potential commercialization dynamics will be of interest for future research on the matter, at least given the plans for branding the country as an upcoming art destination. As the Amman Greater Municipality's plans regarding the branding of Jordan as an upcoming art destination is mainly targeting Amman, rather than any of the country's other cities, it will be left to see how these endeavors impact the national street art and graffiti scene as a whole, especially in hindsight to the different preconditions of the various targeted locations. Amman has suitable canvases in the form of tall buildings, tunnels, and walls for artists to paint on, which makes it easier for people to see the art pieces from afar as well as it, to some extent, protects them from vandalism given the potentially difficult access. In Irbid, as in most medium-sized and smaller cities in Jordan, the tallest apartment building is 4 stories high, which makes it easier to vandalize and limits exposure to direct passers-by. This aggravates the flourishing of the graffiti and street art scene in these cities, due to the struggle of finding appropriate canvases.
Lastly, the presented research could be complimented by further results from an enlarged sample size, in order to concretize the current state of ongoing social change dynamics in Jordan.
Future research on the previous matters would be interesting and relevant for the field of street art and graffiti in Jordan, due to its novelty as well as the lack of research done on the topic in different aspects other than what was represented in the Middle East regarding graffiti and street art, in order to see and hopefully also contribute to the spreading of awareness on the Jordanian situation in the discourse.
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Appendix (1)
Interview guide for artists
1- For how long have you been painting/ doing graffiti in Amman? 2- What do you usually paint? Do you aim for aesthetically pleasing murals, or do you tend to send some type of messages through the art? If yes, what type of messages? 3- Do you think that your messages are getting through to people or do you think they just do not look beyond the visuals? 4- have you ever been criticized for the ideas that you had from other fellow artists or the people or the municipality? 5- Have you ever faced any hate or discrimination on the streets when painting your mural? 6- Did you find it hard at the beginning to paint in the street? What was the reaction of the people walking by? 7- Do other male artist also try to paint murals that are feminist in nature or portray women rights? If yes, do they face hate and discrimination from other male artists or from the people? 8- Have you even suggested a painting and it was rejected by the municipality or by the Baladk festival? 9- What would happen if you painted a mural without the permission of the government? If it is against politics or religion, will you get in trouble for it? 10- Have you ever painted a mural and it ended up being removed or destroyed because it offended some conservative or hating groups? 11- Is there any type of a radical mural that has been painted and has been removed by the authorities? 12- Do you know what was the reason behind lifting the ban on graffiti in Amman? Was there some type of petitions from the artists for the municipality in order for that to happen or was it a surprise to you as well? 13- What is the process when getting a permission for a mural? 14- What is the limit when presenting murals to the municipality? 15- Do you think that street art is a way to start a social movement which might lead to social change in the society?
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Appendix (2)
Interview Guide for Municipality
1- Was there a reason behind lifting the ban on graffiti and street art in the last 5 years? 2- What, in your opinion and according to the municipality, is considered “decent” graffiti/street art and what is not? 3- Since the municipality was involved in the Baladk project, was there also a specific criterion for the paintings or not? Or is the municipality not involved in the selection of the murals? 4- Are the artists the ones who come up with the ideas for the murals or is the municipality? 5- Does the municipality also request painting sometimes or is it just the artists taking permission? 6- Who chooses the places where the murals are painted (for the Baladk project and for murals that are being painted daily)? 7- Does the municipality fund or provide resources for the Baladk project or is it just the permission? If not, then who provides the resources for the project (the artists or private companies)? 8- How is the municipality involving Graffiti in their plans? Because I read about the website and how Jordan is planning to be the next art destination. 9- Which departments in the municipality are associated with graffiti/street art? 10- Since the municipality is considering graffiti as art now and it is being involved in the plans for Jordan as the next art destination, what is the position of the artists in these plans? 11- Do the artists get paid for painting in the festival? 12- Are the artists involved in the planning process of the new project of the new art destination? Are they getting informed about any changes in the project or not? 13- What do you think of women’s involvement and participation in painting the murals and being part of this huge new art type? 14- On what basis do you decide to remove a painting or a mural? Did it ever happen? 15- If someone comes to the municipality and complains about a painting being offensive or indecent, what criterion do you take in order to for the painting to be taken down?
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16- There are many paintings that send specific messages for women’s right and equality, which they also can stand against some people’s ideas and traditions and their religious beliefs. Do you think this also might influence the removal of some painting? 17- Do you think that street art is a way to start a social movement which might lead to social change in the society?
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Appendix (3)
Survey
The Social Impact of Graffiti and Street Art on the society in Jordan
My name is Aram Tarawneh and I am doing my master's in Urban Studies in Malmö university in Sweden. Currently I am in my last semester and I am writing my master thesis. I am going to write about graffiti and street art in Jordan and how it might be changing the urban context in the city as well as how it might be the driver to initiate social change when it comes to the social norms and traditions that are unequal to certain groups such as women.
The following pictures are murals from around Amman, that has been painted by both male and female artists. Some of them are a part of Baladk Art Festival and some of them are by other initiatives. Please write under each picture below what your take on the murals is, and if you get any type of message from them. If yes, what type of message did you get?
أد⻰ آرام اﻟطراوﻧﺔ وأدرس اﻟﻣﺎﺟﺳﺗﯾر ﻲﻓ اﻟﺗﺧطﯾط اﻟﻣد ﻲﻧ ﻲﻓ ﺟﺎﻣﻌﺔ ﻣﺎﻟﻣو ﻲﻓ اﻟﺳوﯾد وﺣﺎﻟﯾ ﺎ أﻧﺎ ﻲﻓ اﻟﻔﺻل اﻟدرا ﻲﺳ اﻟﻧﮭﺎ ﻲﻧ وأﻗوم
ﺑﻛﺗﺎﺑﺔ رﺳﺎﻟﺔ اﻟﻣﺎﺟﺳﺗﯾر. ﻣﺿﻣون رﺳﺎﻟ ﻲﻧ ﯾﺗﻣﺣور ﺣول اﻟﻐراﻓﯾ ﻲﻧ وﻓن اﻟﺷﺎرع ﻲﻓ اﻷردن وﻛﯾف ﻣن اﻟﻣﻣﻛن أن ﺗﻐﯾر اﻟﺳﯾﺎق
اﻟﺣﺿري ﻲﻓ اﻟﻣدﯾﻧﺔ و إذا ﻛﺎﻧت ﻗﺎدرة ﻋ苰 ﺿﻣﺎن اﻟﺗﻐﯾﯾر اﻻﺟﺗﻣﺎ ﻲ⻰ وﺗﻘدم اﻟﻣﺟﺗﻣﻊ ﻲﻓ اﻟﻌﺎدات واﻟﺗﻘﺎﻟﯾد ﻏﯾر اﻟﻌﺎدﻟﺔ ﻟﻔﺋﺔ ﻣﻌﯾﻧﺔ
. ﻲﻓ اﻟﻣﺟﺗﻣﻊ ﻣﺛل اﻹﻣرأة
اﻟﺻور اﻟﺗﺎﻟﯾﺔ ﻋﺑﺎرة ﻋن ﺟدارﯾﺎت ﻣن ﺟﻣﯾﻊ أﻧﺣﺎء ﻋﻣﺎن ، ﺗم رﺳﻣﮭﺎ ﻣن ﻗﺑل ﻓﻧﺎﻧﯾن إﻧﺎث و ذﻛور. ﺑﻌﺿﮭم ﺟزء ﻣن ﻣﮭرﺟﺎن ﺑﻠدك
ﻟﻠﻔﻧون وﺑﻌﺿﮭم ﻣن ﻣﺑﺎدرات أﺧرى. ﯾرﻰﺟ ﻛﺗﺎﺑﺔ أﺳﻔل ﻛل ﺻورة إﻧطﺑﺎﻋك اﻷول ﻋن اﻟﺟدارﯾﺔ وﻣﺎ ھﻲ اﻟﻔﻛرة اﻟ ﻲﻧ راودﺗك ﻋﻧد رؤﯾﺗﮭﺎ؟ * Required 1. Age group *
Under 18 18-25 26-35 36-45 46-55 55-Older Prefer not to say
2. Gender * 57
Male Female Prefer not to say
3. Mural (1): *
Mural by Christina Laube and Mehrdad Zaeri
4. Mural (2): *
Mural by Suhaib Attar
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5. Mural (3): *
Mural by Suhaib Attar
6. Mural (4): *
Mural by Dire
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7. Mural (5): *
Mural by Miramar and Dalal Mitwally
8. Mural (6): *
Mural by Maha Hindi
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9. Mural (7): *
Mural by Maha Hindi
10. Do you think that street art and graffiti is a way to start a social movement which might lead to social change in the society in the future?
هل ﺗﻌتﻘد أن اﻟﻐراﻓي ﻲت واﻟرﺳم ﻋ苰 اﻟجدران وﺳيﻠﺔ ﻟبدء ﺣرﻛﺔ إﺟتمﺎﻋيﺔ ﻗد ﺗؤدي إىل ﺗﻐي ري إﺟتمﺎ ﻲ⻰ ﻲﻓ اﻟمجتمﻊ ﻲﻓ اﻟمستﻘبل؟
Yes
No
Maybe
اختياري: إذا أردت أن تشرح .Optional: If you want to elaborate more on the previous question .11 إجابنك في السؤال السابق.
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