Entrapped Between State and Tradition

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. 2 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 3 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 4 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

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