Graffiti and urban art have always, at their cores, been intimately tied to the human condition. Today, in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, bids of “it’s time to go” are scrawled on buildings near the dictator’s home. In tattered Lebanon, chimera-chasing artists spray images of carefree children flying kites on Beirut’s bombed walls. In Northern Ireland’s blood-bathed tug-of-war, both Republican and Loyalist camps produce iconographic murals to mark their territories. Even in politically stable climates, urban art is telling of present social reality. After all, art pursued purely in aestheticism’s noble name is an indulgence afforded only once certain degrees of social, economic and political comfort have been met. more ›