Date of Award
5-14-2011
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Honors Thesis
Department
International Studies
First Advisor
Ageeth Sluis
Abstract
The English street artist Banksy best describes the power of street art as radical activism through his assertion in his 2003 collection, Banging Yallr Head Against a Brick Wall, that "[ It] is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they're having a piss" ( II ). Banksy is notorious because he is a prolific street artist yet his identity has never been revealed. He plays a prominent role in the current international street art movement. Since the I 970s street art movement in New York City, street art has captured the imaginations of young people around the world as a form of protest and resistance to privatization and oppression of marginalized groups such as youth and people of color. Through the examination of three areas of the world in which street art is prevalent, I posit street art as a radical form of protest to the ageism, racism, and c1assism that Palestinian and Latino youth face today. I also offer suggestions for wider street art applications as radical political activism, as well as ways for the reader to . . . participate 111 street art.
Recommended Citation
Booth, Rosemary Reedy, ""Speak Softly but Carry a Big Can of Paint" - Banksy, Wall and Piece: Street Art as Radical Political Activism" (2011). Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection. 107.
https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/ugtheses/107
Included in
Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons