Article Written by Vanessa Silvera

You've definitely heard of Banksy, and you might be familiar with Shepard Fairey and JR, but could you name a single womxn street artist? Vanessa Silvera will highlight womxn street artists that everyone should know and examine the reasons for their exclusion from wider conversations about street art.

“The city’s the best gallery I could imagine.” – JR

Usually when someone hears the term ‘street art’, several images could spur to mind. You might immediately think of the illusive British graffiti artist Banksy and his satirical, politically charged body of work. On the other hand, street art could also conjure up spray painted words and scribbles found in gang-ridden neighborhoods, connoting ideas of vandalism and criminality.

While its origins can be traced as far back to the cave drawings and paintings of the Stone Age, the street art we know and love today took shape in the 20th century. Among the earliest manifestations of modern street art was the graffiti found on walls and cars in New York and Paris throughout the 1920s and 1930s. These creations were generally a byproduct of gang activity rather than with the intent of being received by the general public. A few decades later in the 1960s, where we begin to see a shift towards postmodernism, many artists sought out new modes of artistic expression aside from more traditional painting and sculpture. Some continued to operate within the confines of the gallery or museum space, but others found freedom on the streets. Dubbed the ‘father of modern day graffiti’, street artist Darryl McCray, known by his tagging name Cornbread, started doing graffiti in his hometown of Philadelphia in the late 1960s. Shortly after, this trend suddenly snowballed into a movement with New York City as its epicenter.

The explosion of Hip Hop as well as youth culture in the 1980s had a significant impact on the popularization of street art. Its practitioners tended to be young, rebellious, and from historically marginalized communities. Among the golden children of the world of street art were Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Before achieving art world recognition, Basquiat and Haring treated New York as their personal canvas to contest socio-political inequalities pertaining to racial, class, and heteronormative power structures.

Today, street art has become mainstream, its commercialization extending beyond the gallery and into the auction house. In 2018, Banksy made headlines when a framed copy of his iconic ‘Girl with Balloon’ partially self-destructed after its purchase at a Sotheby’s auction held in London. The original 2004 mural, once on the Waterloo Bridge, has become commoditized, reflecting the elevation of graffiti from its humble origins to a form of high art. In addition to graffiti, street art has come to encompass a variety of practices and media: stickers, stenciling, fly-posting (or wheatpasting), yarn bombing, light and video projections, installations, and performance.

Despite the great strides that street art has made in recent times, its womxn practitioners and their work remain largely overlooked. This is gradually changing as advances in women’s rights and feminist groups like the Guerrilla Girls expose the rampant sexism and racism within the arts community. Yet, rather paradoxically, this disparity is more acute in street art despite its democratic nature. The question is, why? Art historian Linda Nochlin’s 1971 seminal essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’ argues that historically women were not given the same opportunities as their male counterparts, hindering their success in the arts. Since its publication, other feminist scholars have responded with their own theories, but the main takeaway is that attention is finally being paid to the achievements of womxn artists. In the domain of street art, part of the problem could be attributed to the lack of role models or concerns over personal safety such as the dangers of working outdoors. However, this new generation of womxn artists are subverting gender stereotypes and ensuring they leave their mark (literally) for years to come.

Now, without further ado, here are a few badass womxn street artists:

#1) Lady Pink (Ecuadorian, b. 1964)

Born in Ecuador and raised in New York, Sandra Fabara, under the moniker Lady Pink, is known as the “first lady of graffiti.” From the young age of 15, she painted subway trains across the city at a time when street art was essentially a boy’s club. At 21, she landed her first solo exhibition and has since served as an inspiration and mentor to womxn street artists. Her goal is to empower women through her graffiti and murals, breaking boundaries and fighting for gender equality. She told the Brooklyn Art Museum: “We [women] defend our artworks with our fists and our crazy courage, when you have guys that disrespect you you’re gonna have to teach them a lesson, otherwise they are going to keep walking all over you.”

#2) Maya Hayuk (American, b. 1969)

Hayuk is a Brooklyn-based street artist internationally renown for her bold colored geometric and crafts-inspired murals. Her artistic influences are extensive; including Mexican woven blankets, Mandalas, and Rorschach tests, but cites the arts and crafts traditions of her Ukrainian heritage as her most formative influence. Not only are her inspirations vast and diverse, but also her choices in material, employing acrylic, ink, glitter, spray paint, watercolor, tape, ballpoint pens, and wheat paste. Since her work tends to be non-figurative stylistically, it does not lend itself easily for interpretation from a gender standpoint. However, Hayuk has expressed uneasiness with adding descriptors, like woman or street, in front of the word ‘artist’ because she feels it’s marginalizing. Through abstraction she is able to avoid, or at least minimize, the gendering of her work by audiences and critics.

#3) Shamsia Hassani (Afghanistan, b. 1988)

One of the first female street artists in Afghanistan, Hassani aims to call attention to the hardships women face in her home country. She began her graffiti career working with Combat Communications, a group of artists promoting freedom of expression among Afghan youth. Despite experiencing regular harassment due to her gender for painting outdoors, her passion and determination to be heard doesn’t stop her. Often, Hassani depicts women dressed in burqas as a reminder of their plight, but also to make people see them differently, to “show them bigger than what they are in reality, and in modern forms, in shaped in happiness, movement, maybe stronger.”

Honorable Mentions

· Alice Mizrahi (New York)

· Bambi (London)

· Clare Rojas (San Francisco)

· ELLE (New York)

· Faith47 (South Africa)

· KASHINK (Paris)

· La Suerte (Ecuador)

· Lady Aiko (New York)

· Miss Van (Barcelona)

· Olek (New York)

· Panmela Castro (Brazil)

· Swoon (New York)

· Vexta (Australia)

Street art and its practitioners are at last receiving the recognition they deserve. In a world dominated by abstract, conceptual, and digital art, the rawness and immediacy of street art is refreshing. Although womxn across the arts, especially in the public domain, continue to be eclipsed by the accomplishments of male artists, they are reclaiming the streets for themselves. Their place is in the home, and that home is in the streets.

Why Have There Been No Great Women [Street] Artists?