Meaning of Place in Political Street Art

Tiivistelmä – Referat – Abstract Street art interferes in urban life and communicates directly with people. My thesis focuses on examining the meaning of place in the political street art. I study the existence of a street art world and the specific characters of it. Street artists act most of the time outside the traditional art world and aim at challenging the existing art institutions. Therefore, numerous street artworks have political character. Holly Eva Ryan defines political street art as art which has orientation towards society and engages with power. Street artworks exist in a physical location. However, people interact with place as humans create and use places. Therefore, the concept of place includes also psychological and social dimensions. Consequently, people produce meanings of place and different social groups produce multiple meanings. Defining place is a process that never ceases. The concepts of sense and identity of place clarify the human interaction with place. The specific aim of my thesis is to examine the impact of political street art on place. The research material consists of Banksy’s Brexit mural in Dover in the UK and four of his artworks in the West Bank in the Middle East. In addition, I analyse ludo’s street artworks in Paris and Berlin. The analysis covers the presentations of the artists, the descriptions and the interpretations of the political street artworks including analyses of place and its history. On the base of the research material, street art is a part of the defining process of place. There are also extreme cases in which the defining process has partially stopped and some members of the society have limited possibilities to participate in the production of the meanings of place. Street artist with political ethos can find support and inspiration in the city areas of political activism as pasting an artwork is an act of participation in the political dialogue. Street artworks can also change meaning of the place by softening or bringing new elements to the identity of place. Social together with traditional media are the instruments for producing place even after the street artwork has ceased to exist. It seems that the debate on place will continue and take further steps in research of digital production of place