Stencil graffiti in urban waterscapes of Buenos Aires and Rosario, Argentina

Abstract

Stencil graffiti is an illegal, multi-vocal, visual urban discourse that alters the texture of street experience through inventive juxtaposition of mass-mediated and local imagery. Like street artists and neighborhood assemblies working in a variety of genres, stencil-makers compose public evidence of powerful trans-boundary imaginaries that are at the same time part of a uniquely Argentinean cultural formation. This analysis is based on over 300 digital photographic examples collected by the author in 2007 post-crisis Argentina, where the flourishing of artistic dissent is shaped by vibrant immigrant traditions, widespread poverty, and the recent political history of military dictatorship followed by an economic collapse that radicalized youth and the middle class. Building on Gell's argument that art objects, and the places that form part of their causal milieu, share social agency with the artists that produce them, this article shows how stencils confront institutional power by expanding the semiotic range of two aquatic spaces: a neighborhood fountain in Buenos Aires and a national riverfront monument in Rosario. The focus is on developing an approach towards understanding the active role of public waterscapes in the cultural and political performance of collective memory and social change.