Female street artists in the UK are finally getting the recognition they deserve, but awareness is only the first step towards proving that gender shouldn’t be an issue. Here’s how women are breaking down all kinds of barriers, brick by brick.
How would you picture a street artist? Perhaps you would start with the air tight respiratory mask, or maybe the inevitable paint covered clothing. But when you picture their physical features, do you picture a female?
If you take a stroll through any of the diverse graffiti and street art hubs of the UK, whether it’s carefully crafted stencil art, intricate ceramic mosaics, evocative lettering or even the new craze of ‘yarn-bombing’ that you see, the identity and gender of the artist is not always obvious. Although anonymity is part of the beauty of the culture, as the scene intertwines itself with popular culture, artists have seen the benefits of identifying themselves and racking up a social media following. It was only a matter of time before attention fell on the females involved in a very much male-dominated scene.
A catalyst for this awareness of female street artists was Femme Fierce, the UK’s first and largest all-female street art jam. It first took place on International Women’s Day in March 2014 and caused a bit of a stir in the urban art community after the girls took out big names such as Banksy and King Robbo in Waterloo’s Leake Street. Now due to run for its third year this May, founder of the event, Ayaan Bulale, explains why it has had so much success. “There’s still an aura of mystery about female street artists, which is nonsense,” she exclaims, “but if it works for me to get my end goal achieved by all means we can be mysterious,” she adds with a grin. By her end goal she means discovering, engaging and inspiring as many female artists as possible to take to the streets and in two years she has uncovered over 200 in the UK alone.
As graffiti writer Akit puts it, highlighting female involvement in the culture has become “quite trendy”, but she isn’t one to be part of all the “hoo-ha”. “I find this whole pigeonholing of female graffiti writers a bit tiresome,” she sighs, “it all starts ticking a box, making sure everyone is taken care of, but it ain’t for everyone.” Akit’s viewpoint stems from her roots in the culture, born and bred a Londoner she has been involved with the UK scene for 25 years and has watched it evolve from hard-core tagging of trains in the 80’s to the largely commercialised sub-genre of street art that currently defines the streets of the capital. She humorously jokes about how graffiti has found its way onto kids pyjamas and the insides of some of the McDonalds chains (“it looked like a crime scene it was really horrible”), but really her opinion on the shift matches her traditionalist graffiti writer viewpoint. “I just think it’s been prostituted a bit and corporations use it as kind of a shortcut to youth culture and language,” you can sense the annoyance in her tone, “when I started it was just for us select few.”
The majority of graffiti is still produced by graffiti writers for other writers, meaning there is a constant battle for respect within the culture. This initiation of “earning your stripes” is something that graffiti writer Syrup struggled with for many years. “Male writers I knew would have me emulsioning [preparing] metres and metres of wall space for them, I was told your treated how any other writer is treated at the start.” Although she feels this process went on for longer than it should have, she wouldn’t have had it any other way: “They effectively made me see myself as a writer not as a female writer.”
This difference in audience is what separates graffiti from the pictorial street art movement in terms of the public acceptance of the two. Ayaan Bulale explains: “It’s all about semantics, people automatically associate graffiti with fear and criminality, but actually it is about hand styles, how you drop the letter and blend colours and how you use shading and shadows.” The public seem to be more in touch with street art, as London based blogger, Nelly Balazs, illustrates: “Art on the streets becomes part of your life like the local coffee shop and therefore people are more likely to form an opinion about it.”
A big part of this public acceptance of street art stems from the development of companies that organise permission walls for artists to create on, as enthusiasts can follow and involve themselves in the production process from start to finish. Permission walls have also enticed more females to get involved in street art. Aside from her success documenting the scene – with over 36 thousand followers on Instagram – Nelly Balazs is also employed by street art platform, Global Street Art. Warming her hands on a freshly made cappuccino after introducing around 20 street art newcomers to the Camden scene on a street art tour, she says: “We offer around 15% of our walls in London to female artists, we aren’t gender biased however there are just less female artists out there.” Although 15% doesn’t seem a particularly high figure, it is higher than many would expect from a hobby that is largely illegal. Street artist VLong, whose venture with a spray can is all about finding “balance” within herself, explains: “As things stand nowadays if you go out there and you get caught, the fines you have to pay are so high that I would go straight to jail because I don’t have that money. It is just too risky and painting with permission is also pleasurable.”
Although VLong’s first medium of choice was a spray can, using a spray can has also become an extension of art practice for many art graduates and established artists to try their hand at, representing a challenging and contemporary medium. “Many artists, designers and illustrators that are women at some point will have a go at this form as part of their learning process, it is part of the wider choices on offer to women who study art and design in the UK,” says Lorraine Gamman, Professor of Design at Central Saint Martins who specialises in gender representation. “My 18-year-old daughter has sprayed her bedroom and some of the outside wall of our home with stencils she made when doing A-level art,” she adds affectionately. Take abstract expressionist artist Anna Laurini for example, who took to the streets of Shoreditch with her standout portraiture: “I wanted to see if I had the guts to do it on the streets as well as in my studio.”
Sometimes it is assumed that men are more inclined to seek out danger, but as Anna Laurini clarifies, women can be just as rebellious: “It is thrilling knowing you’re not supposed to be doing it, the danger of being caught and the adrenaline is a lot of fun.” Even as we walk past one of her commissioned pieces, Anna can’t resist pulling out some black paint to touch up her work. “Damn, I forgot my paint brushes and I’m meant to be doing a piece in Soho later,” she sighs, but then turns back to me with a hint of mischief in her eye and adds, “it’s just so addictive.” Although permission removes this element of revolt, Nelly Balazs believes that the act of “putting your mark on someone else’s property is still making a statement”.
But why is there this preconception that women don’t belong in the street art and graffiti scene? Lorraine Gamman clarifies that women’s “struggle for value compared with men is something that is common to all art movements.” Global street artist Chinagirl Tile works primarily with ceramic installations that have an underlying social commentary. She believes that it is the differences between the way that men and women are brought up in society that cause females to be thought of differently within the culture. She explains: “People see it is a male thing because young boys are more drawn to silly things than girls, I believe more women would be involved if they had been more encouraged to.” VLong, who was born in Argentina, also expresses concern that the way society functions can leave female artists at a disadvantage. “In the UK curators have to include women because it is politically correct, they don’t do it because they see women are involved, they include say three women to look good.” But Nelly Balazs has never been witness to this gender inequality: “the circles I move in when we talk about street art, we don’t talk about it in relation to gender, if you like something you like something, if you don’t you don’t.”
As Akit expresses rather frankly: “pointing out female involvement is just banging on about something that should be accepted, like ‘wow you’ve got tits, oh my god you can hold a spray can’, that’s no big deal.” But female appreciation is the first step towards equal appreciation, and there is certainly plenty of appreciation, something that Ayaan Bulale is very pleased by. “There were 100 hits on google about female street artists, now there are literally millions with a capital S,” she quips and begins to reel off the names of female artists in the UK, one letter of the alphabet at a time.
As the UK street art and graffiti scene flourishes, the number of large scale street art murals being commissioned is increasing. Although London has been at the forefront of this trend, other cities are now catching on. November 2015 saw the creation of one of Liverpool’s biggest murals by two female artists: Cbloxx and Aylo who together form Nomad Clan.
Nomad Clan have been working together for less than a year but have already painted all over the UK, and this project has helped them reach new heights, literally and in terms of their career.
[Mural sponsored by Kobra Paint. With thanks to Capital & Centric]
Shoreditch is the epitome of the UK Street Art Scene: vibrant and diverse, with a thriving commercial market. Therefore it has become a massive hub for street artists to meet up, socialise and paint at suitably-named paint-jams.
Bethany Connor went along to an all-female meet-up in Blackall Street to find out why female artists are drawn to creating together and what kind of response they are getting from the public.