The political work of graffiti during the Covid-19 pandemic: a view from Tottenham, London

Abstract

Graffiti and its ancillary forms have been used for a wide variety of purposes including ornamentation, territorial demarcation, commercial announcements and political contestation. This visual essay takes up Lyman Chaffee’s notion that graffiti can constitute an alternative media system that offers a glimpse into emerging and evolving political discourses. Using ‘walking-as-method’ in a north London neighbourhood, it surveys the array of political graffiti produced in the context of the UK’s first wave of Covid-19 and accompanying period of lockdown. In so doing, it presents a visual chronology of shifting popular opinion on the British state’s handling of the pandemic and illuminates the ways that the politics of pandemic management has intersected with other national and local concerns, from the resourcing of public services to the Black Lives Matter campaign.