Graffiti has its roots in urban youth and protest cultures. However, in the past decades it has become an established visual art form.
The volume investigates how graffiti oscillates between genuine subversiveness and a more recent commercialisation and appropriation by the (art) market. At the same time it looks at how graffiti and street art are increasingly used as an instrument to collectively re-appropriate the urban space and thus articulate different forms of belonging, ethnicity and citizenship. The focus lies on the role of graffiti in metropolitan contexts in the Spanish-speaking world and includes a glimpse at historical inscriptions in ancient Rome and Mesoamerica, as well as at the graffiti movement in Egypt.