Reading Graffiti : The Semiotics of Street Art

This book examines the language of the varied types of graffiti and street art while uncovering the contemporary uses and purpose behind our need to tag out our existence through letters and images on buildings and city blocks.

Graffiti is as much about our need for art as expression—providing voice for the voiceless—as it is our need for beauty, social criticism, or civil disruption in our environments. This book takes an approach to understanding the ways in which graffiti and street art has changed the way we look at our environments, our social institutions, and ourselves.

The book is informed by an immersive literature review, research at the Museum of Graffiti in Miami, Florida, research, and conversations with local street artists practicing in genres like stickers/slaps, lettering, murals, miniatures/installations, culture jamming and ad busting. It is also informed by fieldnotes of street art tours around the world to explore the semiotic landscape of locales and the impact on the local street art cultures.

Through the polysemy of the word “graffiti” we see cultural history and modern-day actors, graffiti becomes a thing and a practice. It is human and it is historical.