For the city’s ‘writers’, graffiti is more than vandalism or decoration — it is a game of fame, a form of travel and friendship and a way to leave a mark beyond the screen
By Julien Oeuillet / Contributing reporter in Kaohsiung
An eye-catching crowd is gathered in front of Mess-age Studio & Graffiti Supplies (寫手城市工作室), a shop on a small Kaohsiung street.
Young men wear fashionable streetwear, looking like the sleek extras of a hip-hop video, and girls wear improbable combinations of colorful garments and carefully crafted hairstyles — not to be sexy, but to be different.
Among them are graffiti artists — generally referred to as “writers.”
Photo courtesy of Babu
“I’m just a guy who loves to do vandal shit!” says Dwang (底旺), a writer, with a laugh. “I started in this because I made bad friends.”
And yet, as they gather for a “battle” event, the vibe is joyful, humorous, almost innocent.
Babu (李冠穎), a 35-year-old writer, is a figure in the milieu.
Photo: Julien Oeuillet
“In Taiwan, we saw hip-hop music videos and rap magazines, with these rappers looking very cool,” he says. “And the background was always big, beautiful, colorful letters. Some went to America, and Americans came to Taiwan, and we started to know more about the culture.”
The shop sells materials for writers: paint bombs, masks, accessories, stickers, underground zines and other paraphernalia of the subculture.
High-quality Faber-Castell color pencils stand near Wu-Tang Clan LPs.
Photo: Julien Oeuillet
Today, writers take turns quickly improvising small graffiti pieces on a theme, just for a friendly “battle” competition.
“Graffiti starts in the street,” Babu says. “Taiwanese people think graffiti should be a beautiful mural, but in the beginning, it was about writing your name on the wall. It’s a game of fame.”
The bad-boy attitude is mostly for fun.
Photo: Julien Oeuillet
Babu says it is “like an online game: you have your nickname and you start scoring and leveling up. In graffiti, your name is your tag and you start to put it on the streets, on the wall and you become famous. And only then can you make a beautiful, big mural.”
‘TAKE THE RISK’
Graffiti art stands at the border of legality and transgression: “There are legal walls,” Babu says, “but the original spirit is to do it on the street. If you only do legal walls, some writers will not recognize you, they will think you are fake. You have to take the risk.”
He mentions some writers in Taipei who have hung from a rope attached to the top of a building to paint a very high wall, as an example of a feat that grants you respect. “But I’m too old to do that,” he quips.
It is easy to see graffiti purely as vandalism. But it should also be seen as young people disconnecting from the online grind: graffiti is a tangible piece of art that involves going out and socializing.
“Me and my crew went to another country for an event,” Babu says. “It makes me travel, I meet a lot of foreign writers coming to Kaohsiung too, so I make new friends. Without graffiti I wouldn’t know so many people.”
Graffiti culture is growing in acceptance thanks to the talent of local artists.
“I asked graf artists from other countries,” Patter (培特), another writer, says, “and they say the Taiwanese style is cuter. Like, lots of animals, cats… We do it this way because it’s more direct, and it attracts people. It’s more welcoming, more friendly, towards people who do not know the graffiti culture.”
Dwang defines Kaohsiung writers as “chilled.”
“They are very creative with the structure of the letters they put on the street,” he says. “In Taipei it’s mostly just writing in the Roman alphabet. In the south we try to include characters, and Chinese writing. We put some punch in it!”
Dwang is still learning from senior writers like Babu.
“He taught me a lot about how to do Chinese writing in graffiti,” Dwang says. “It’s more fun to write Chinese characters, it has angles, perspective and you can put different meanings because it’s not just a letter, there’s a story in it.”
When asked how he decides where to paint, Dwang says: “Where there is no camera.”
Laughing, he adds that he has a fondness for “small and weird spaces, where I can squeeze in. I like to squeeze my stuff in a small place, like a corner. I prefer to fill the gap rather than cover the whole thing.”
The mindset is that a graffiti-adorned wall is better than a boring concrete wall.
“Me and my friends once were sued by an old woman because we painted her wall,” Babu says. “But in court she changed her mind.”
The woman had wrongly assumed they were disgruntled renters taking revenge.
“But then she said: ‘Oh it’s art? Then it’s good.’ And she ended up retracting her complaint.”
The art is also demanding due to the conditions in which they paint.
“If you want to take time to do a big wall, you need to find an abandoned, ruined building,” Babu says. “It can take the whole day, bringing a lot of spray cans, or even a bucket of paint. And these houses are not clean, full of dirt and mosquitoes. If it’s outside, the sunburn in Kaohsiung is crazy.”
Still, Babu would never trade it for anything else. “I just enjoy the moment when I do graffiti and try not to do it perfect, which in the end has more soul.”
