"Street art is nothing else but urban poetry that catches someone's eye..."

                                          ܔܢܜܔUrB4nUSܔܢܜܔ

All pictures are taken by the author of this blog unless stated otherwise. 

Let's warm up by defining urban art. It is associated with art created in the city, hence the name, depicting city life. In its truest form, urban art adopts the form of graffiti, an unauthorized (illegal) marking of the public space by an individual or group, as it is often associated with gang or illicit groups. Surely that's why its graphic representation may disturb the state of mind of people. While some may argue street art shares the exact same definition, with the only difference in its legality, graffiti has overshadowed any dictionary definition I could write.  However, graffiti has also been associated, in a more positive light, with innate human expression going all the way back to ancient Rome.  

Regardless of the definition you go with, at the end of the day, urban art has become part of the identity of cities, providing them with character and an aesthetic. Such uniqueness allows cities to become part of the culture as a living agent that, on one hand, breathes in the dreams and souls of the pedestrians and exhales the thick smog that has replaced oxygen in this concrete jungle. And on the other, its existence has been scratched with the biggest proof of existence, pain.

 

       I do not intend to make you feel sympathy for a cluster of roads and erected cement; instead, I invite you to reflect the next time you encounter a tag or a stencil on the street about the author, not as a victim of its surroundings but as a fellow member, a friend, or a partner whose desire of expression was too raging to the point of embodying it in a bunch of dull concrete.