The Unpredictable in Everyday

In the summer of 2014 in Paris, I wandered through the city and began to notice drawings scratched on walls, graffiti lurking in corners, wall paintings in a funky nook, and fragments of murals on a crowded street. Once I began looking more closely at things, I noticed them everywhere—their shapes, colors, jumping from something close-up, to further away.

I was simply being attentive to a particularly quirky subject.

Here’s a palette of the graffiti, fragments and overlooked images I noticed, then recorded. Some are political, sexual, violent even. It’s kind of a weird poetic undercurrent of my walks around Paris.

 

* A cultural note: In February 2015, Steppenwolf Theater Company produced the play, This is Modern Art. Based on actual events, the play follows a Chicago graffiti crew to explore what we as a culture identify as art. From the director, “Graffiti operates at the level of metaphor for voices that exist at the margins of culture who have been deliberately excluded or erased from dominate discourse.”