Le graffiti à Montréal : pratique machiste et stratégies féminines
Graffiti has long been associated with vandalism in the city where it has proliferated.  In the same logic of visibility and promotion found in all cities, it has become so integrated into the urban environment that we do not even notice it. Nevertheless, its presence constantly arouses the anger of property owners, citizens, and the municipal authorities who spend large sums of money every year in removal costs. In spite of this, graffiti has become an urban art phenomenon. Graffiti artists have attained fame outside of the subculture and are able to exhibit their work legally, in part, because of an increased interest from the art world. Art institutions and the art market have contributed to the increased craze and enthusiasm for this urban art practice.  Graffiti is the expression of an illegitimate identity that appropriates urban surfaces in the city using a fictitious name. Writing and spreading that name as much as possible are core values in the graffiti subculture. Risk taking, challenging authority, and dissidence are values generally understood as being masculine. As well, the archetypal graffiti artist is marginal and rebellious. Understood in this manner, it can be seen that this highly populated subculture is powerfully chauvinistic.  Female artists in the graffiti community are a minority, in particular because the appeal for an illicit, dangerous, night time practice is less popular. Using an approach grounded in art history and gender studies, this paper will explore why there is a generally low level of interest for women to practice graffiti. It will also be demonstrated that in practice female graffiti artists distinguish themselves from their male counterparts. How do they qualify their experiences? What kind of iconography do they choose to define themselves? What are their opinions of, and how do they perceive, their own subculture? Finally, how they do characterize their artistic feminine status within a male chauvinist community?
Graffiti Women Urban art Graffiti signature Gender Chauvinism Art public Public art Subculture Gender studies