During their final days of visual art classes, Class IV students have been studying graffiti as a radical form of visual communication. Influenced by pictures of graffiti lining the walls of the West Bank that divide Palestine and Israel, students in Emilie Stark-Menneg’s class were assigned the task of creating their own provocative images addressing social justice. On Wednesday afternoon, the class climbed to the second floor of the Pritzker Science Center construction site to spray-paint their work on the plywood exterior of the building.
“I felt it was important for the students to graffiti their stencils onto a real wall in order that they engage with street art’s transient nature, one that parallels the rapid evolution and decay of our urban landscape,” said Emilie about the project.
“Students drew upon a variety of sources, such as internationally recognized graffiti artists, Banksy, BLU and Shepard Ferry. They incorporated their own fantasies with a mixture of pop-cultural icons and ready-made clichés; these appropriations spawned a vibrant dialogue on the grounds of ownership and authorship of public domain images.”
