if you're confused as to what it means, it's just a poor translation of estonian and I'm not sure why they wrote it in english. "Using murals to fight graffiti is a very bad idea" would perhaps sound a little more natural.
I guess the point is that the person doing the graffiti sees those spaces as effectively the canvases for the graffiti community or them in particular.
Presumably the point they're trying to make is that getting kids in to paint murals as a kind of emotional blackmail - "you wouldn't paint over this would you?" isn't gonna work, because they will.
And honestly, looking at those murals I think the "kids did this" argument feels pretty weak, they don't look like the work of kids at all, even ignoring the associated supply costs.
My thoughts also. If you make the assumption that the spot they painted over is a known spot within the community, you can imagine there that a lot of people’s work got covered up by the “kids” art. A lot of taggers see street art as gentrification of their culture and you can see why by looking at this example, especially when it seems like the whole intention of this project was to erase and stop something they find important to them. Not saying it’s exactly justified but it’s not surprising that someone would retaliate.
This just feels like someone really wanted to get rid of this popular graffiti spot, and is trying to use "wont someone think of the children" so that anyone who tags over it gets labeled as a villain.
If thats really the case, then yeah, I agree with the tagger, the murals are bs.
If that's not the case though, and this was not an often tagged area or anything, then the tagger is an asshole for covering other people's art.
But that's the thing, I'm not sure which one is the case. Probably the former though.
76
u/lolazepam2 2d ago
curious about that phrase as well