Male speaks through walls

Photo credit: Zeek Ashraf

The human race is a vain one. It is our mortality that makes us vain. We struggle to exist as is. We refuse to die without proving our existence. Thus follows an insatiable greed to adorn, be adorned and continue adorning. Our minds, bodies, loved ones, habitats, that surround and contain us. The adornments are unnatural and discomforting at first. The human affixes precious metals, stones and pigment on and in their fleshy vessels. The adornment doesn’t stop there. Whatever man loves or hate, they adorn. Whatever man sees or feels, natural or unnatural, they inflict adornment. In similar fashion, (I'm so punny) the walls of Malé are adorned with graffiti.

If you wish to hear a city speak, open your eyes. If you wish to listen to the sentences a city speaks, stand in front the walls achingly adorned by the hands of those that live in these spaces. Malé is speaking to you, through the writings on her walls, shapes and curves left by; spray cans, markers, crayons, heck even in pencils the cretans of this wretched city would write and draw on whatever canvases that are within their reach. The government calls it the dissident deviancy plaguing the walls of this city, I call it creativity untouched by capitalism. Freedom of expression. At the end of the day, it is convenient for all parties involved to settle on calling it graffiti. The writing is on the wall and Malé speaks through it, if you dare to listen.

Photo credit: author.

The first ever graffiti was said to be 500 BC, allegedly. I would argue graffiti is just as old as language, as old as critical thinking and as old as our encounters and attempting to come to terms with mortality. Thereby, graffiti exists alongside man. It is a vanity that compelled man time and time again to deface decorate public spaces with indications of their brief existence, declarations of love, and proof of lives lived. It is also that very same vanity that compels man to erase these evidences to deny mortality. Man may struggle with to look eye to eye with the mortality graffiti poses, graffiti will not. Until it is erased by sheer force or by the genteel passing of time. The finiteness, the mortality of it all is what compels man to leave a mark of our existence. The limbs that lay colour of words and symbols on the walls of Malé are no different.

There are some hot debates that these isles have been well established as monopolistic mint factory, supplying cowrie shells as currency, that once valued one slave as two cowries. However Malé was decided as the centre much later. Once a meagre square kilometer forcefully is now dried up to become a whopping three square kilometers. Today, this city houses 100,000 people. Botox injected cement structures may loom on every inch of Malé, but this is a city in the nude. Malé wears nothing, whatever decency she gets is from the adornment of her people. Sprayed on words, symbols, stuck on posters and stickers. Even this iota of adornment is easily blasphemised as it was placed. 

Photo credit: author.

Art can be a visual snapshot of lived experiences and human expression, imagined and fact. Graffiti is no different in this aspect. The fine difference between art and graffiti is illicitness. Unlike most conventional art, graffiti on the walls is free to look at, free to stimulate minds and free to enjoy. If it is monetised and taped behind an audience’s approval, then it is no longer graffiti. So we call graffiti a deviant menace that dampens the truth that we will all die. There seems to be less appreciation for artistic adornment of Malé that is freely and readily available on the streets. Not many take ownership of indulging in graffiti based artistic endeavours either. But if the art is protected and venerated behind the glass of an exhibition in a mostly empty hall, ownership and creation are more freely announced. 

Malé may be a barely clothed and near-naked city but it is definitely and by default, absolutely tattered and tattooed. Barely any flora for shade and cover. Not much deliberate adornment with intent aside for; all the tags, throwies, less than often master “pieces” and even more rarely wild styles. Most roads and their spaces, walls and signages are left unspared with some mark of adornment. Besides this, Malé is wilfully kept in the nude. Surprising for a place bursting at the seams with thoughts, restless artistic hands and vast spaces of potential canvases taped behind intangible ropes of bureaucracy? 

Photo credit: author

There is form of graffiti that dominates the streets of Malé, with the least artistic contribution and lacklustre adornment, are posters of politicians, pasteups. Faces of wifebeaters, abusers and usually mediocre policy makers with little contribution to society. The longevity of this particular type of pasteups have a particular life cycle, which regurgitates faces of politicians like it’s a revolving door. These pasteups get torn up by mindless wanderers and vengeful hands. In between the tidbit destruction of these pasteups, another fresh one is laid on top of it. Scratch, scrap, tear, rinse and repeat. A caricature amalgamation of faces new and old, merge together to create a Frankenstein human portrait, neither man nor woman, neither old nor young, neither bearded nor veiled. An affliction no less than getting a thousand chewing gums stuck in the pubic hairs of Malé. Tags are indeed borderline egoistic in nature. However they do not stare back at you with eyes that beckon you greedily, begging for egoistic validation. There are no references for these monstroticities. 

Photo credit: author.

Malé cretans will habitually do tags based on current affairs, popular culture, whatever else that shocks and gripes them. Hot news on cold walls. Notably, around a particular location, there is an entire gallery of graffiti on one road. Scattered lay multiple tags, noticeably appearing after the incident of Alamgiri. The cold news gallery of Alamgiri for some reason this collection has yet to be erased or painted over. Seemingly shook, a person or persons, to the core, till they had to express. Either their hatred towards; homosexuality, adultery, prostituiton?, immorality, MNDF slander, was too strong to keep inside, they had to let it be publicly known, displayed for all to see. Another habitual tag is done on roadsigns. Gang and member tags on arrows of direction and “މރ ދނއ” on opposing directions. “Art>law” on stop signs, unironically, by someone who evidently and passionately believes art is greater than law. But what does it mean? That art is above the law? That we can break the law for art’s sake, that it’s permissible? In any case, all proof of lives and lives lived.

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Throwups on the other hand, require more time and complexity. This type of graffiti is thrown onto the walls of Malé with some level of pre-determined uniform structure. Minimally coloured in and oftentimes left hollow. There are sprinkles of funkily bubbled fonts and tall fonts, in plan sight, walls facing towards open roads and narrow alleyway in close quarters. 

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Aside freehanded throw ups, there are cookie=cutter stencils sparsely sprinkled around Malé. “India out” on the rocks around industrial area, “we failed Gaza” on electric boxes, “ފނނވރނ ފނނނ ވޓއ ބނނވމ” on white walls, and other series of stencil throws. Stenciled throw ups may seem easy to execute, but the streets say it requires finesse, precision and foresight.

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Much less than frequently does Malé host masterpieces, humbly referred to as ’pieces’ for short. Compared to modest tags and less modest throwups, pieces require more; time, effort, planning and execution. It's a compilation of layers; highlights, shadows and background, a multicoloured and multi shaded final piece. Never as small as its prior graffiti counterparts and much larger in scale. There is an obnoxiously bright red graffti on a wall facing the waves of Raalhugandu. Shout out to whoever did this though I still cannot read the entire word, the redness contrasts the gentle blues of its environment surrounded by smaller sibling tags and throwups. 

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Rarely are there, murals or one-off, full-blown wild styles in Malé. With all the fingers and limbs of all limbs can we count wild style graffiti, even less remain unscathed and preserved. There are more intricate and complex compared to the prior mentioned forms of graffiti. Both in terms of time and execution. It takes a team, permit and blessings to complete a wild style. One such example a wild style graffiti of blues and cryptic calligraphy bursting from the greys and dulls of a narrow bend of a road. Aside from the technical layers, the final wild style graffiti must invoke confusion before clarity, the words themselves require technicality to decipher. Quite the fairly flex-ing advertisement for a wall branding. Even with illicitness, artists find a way to finish wild styles in public. 

Photo credit: author.

Most words written are in English, hashtags becoming dominant in more and more new additions of tags and phrases. Words are more dominant compared to symbols and imagery. The words are oftentimes layered over time, in different mediums, by different hands. The time may be undetermined, but surviving pieces of graffiti can be traced, a good few decades back. Whatever un-etched from public spaces still remain etched in the memories of the Malé dwellers. Malé is an elaborate pigeon nest, a spillage of a lakh humans all shoved in matchboxes with no equality. 

However illicit and deemed negative, the Malé cretans are barely held back from graffiti expressions. Withheld spaces of expression force the residents to illegally leave their mark of humanness. Man may laugh at the magpies collecting shiny tidbits, an eclectic and eccentric collection, from all places, everywhere and nowhere, that somehow tie together to belong in the abode of a peculiar creature. The modern man sits in his hole of Ikea tidbits, collections mass produced to homogeneity. He sits in assurance that no stranger would leave subliminal words and symbols on his walls. 

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Life is short, fleeting. Mankind born vain, begins their repentance with the very first breath. With angrily clenched fists thrown into empty air lands on death’s door. So why not decorate the walls and spaces of this seemingly temporary place, before death opens her door? This is my graffiti of graffiti. Albeit a poor caricature that tried to understand what it could of graffiti nontheless.