CSMC supports exhibition at the MHGA City Becomes Colourful

25 November 2022

Photo: Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte

In the early 1980s, much of Hamburg presents a picture of charmless concrete deserts – until it becomes a hotspot of the young graffiti culture. The exhibition ‘A City Becomes Colourful’ tells of the many metamorphoses of a scene that (literally) wrote a chapter of the city’s recent history.

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‘A lot of it was scrawling. But a lot of it had even me enthralled.’ Bodo Claußen’s remark on graffiti in 1988 is quite remarkable. After all, at that time he is the head of a task force of the Railway Police whose very purpose is to stop the ‘daubers’. But despite his role, the officer can’t help but acknowledge that graffiti does not fit into any category. What many people at the time initially condemn as vandalism is in fact a captivating phenomenon which is at least as much driven by the urge for artistic self-expression as by the thrill of the forbidden.

Before Hamburg’s policemen hunt young sprayers, judges impose heavy fines, and newspapers and magazines run cover stories, a lot has happened in a short time. At the beginning of the 1980s, the city is caught by the hip-hop wave coming from the US. Break-dancing, DJ-ing, and graffiti become the most important forms of expression of a subculture that starts small and then grows very fast. Graffiti is the most visible of these. Where before there were only a few sporadic political slogans on grey house walls (‘Russians out of Afghanistan’, ‘Anybody who votes for Kohl votes for WAR’, et cetera), now more and more sophisticated pieces are spreading all over the place: flashy, colourful, illegal – the more eye-catching, the better.

For this reason, it is no surprise that graffiti – and the appropriate way of dealing with its originators – soon becomes a controversial issue raising many people’s temperature. However, even as the police begins to crack down in the late 80s, the scene becomes more professional. Graffiti, at least in part, increasingly finds its way from the streets into the galleries. Bodo Claußen is not the only one to notice that what is created here are often works of art that have an intrinsic value. And a monetary value, too: slowly, a market for graffiti art is emerging.

With the exhibition ‘A City Becomes Colourful. Hamburg Graffiti History 1980 – 1999’, graffiti has continued its path and has now even arrived in the museum. Graffiti is an ephemeral kind of art: some works last years, others only a few days. But thanks to the diligent work of the curators, who were themselves part of the scene from the very beginning and who also engaged in documenting it early on, visitors to the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte (MHG) can experience in fast motion how graffiti culture sprouted and blossomed, how it was sometimes simultaneously fought against and celebrated, and how it added colour to a formerly grey city. One of the curators is Mirko Reisser alias DAIM, a former Artist in Residence at CSMC and one of the key figures of the graffiti scene in Hamburg and beyond.

At CSMC, a new Research Field dedicated to graffiti was established this year. In in addition to its contemporary manifestations in Hamburg and elsewhere, it investigates the entire history of graffiti since antiquity from a global perspective. The CSMC is supporting the exhibition as a partner, and joint events with the MHG are planned for 2023. The exhibition is open until 31 July 2023.