SOUTH CHICAGO — A traveling, international gathering of graffiti artists returns to the South Side this weekend as organizers work to spread their love of urban art to Chicagoans of all ages.
The Meeting of Styles mural festival takes place Friday-Sunday. The festivities are centered on Commercial Avenue near 93rd Street and South Chicago Avenue, while a smaller gathering will take place at the 59th Street viaduct in West Englewood, organizers said.
Up to 175 artists — “all the top muralists of Chicago,” as well as artists from Mexico City, Poland, Singapore and beyond — are expected to paint the viaducts, Eduardo “dTel” Luna said.
“Chicago is known for top-tier graffiti,” said Luna, a graffiti writer who’s organized the last five local meetups. “Chicago is very active in the graffiti community, from painting murals to painting trains to … rappelling off the buildings. Chicago has always been a pioneer in pushing the envelope to get your art out there.”
The weekend also features:
- A photo challenge for young adults, whose work will be printed, framed and displayed in an exhibition the weekend of Oct. 4.
- A flea market and a resource fair with neighborhood nonprofits from 1-4 p.m. Saturday at Nine3 Studios.
- A screening of the latest version of the documentary “Southeast: A City Within A City” Saturday at Steelworkers Park, on the lakefront at 87th Street. The event opens at 5 p.m., and the film begins at 6:30 p.m.
Meeting of Styles began in 1997 at the Schlachthof Wiesbaden cultural center in Germany. The festival travels the globe, and will hit Los Angeles and cities in Taiwan, Greece, Ecuador and Jamaica by the end of the year.
The local edition is regularly held on the Southeast Side to coincide with the annual Mexican Independence Day parade, with the most recent meetup taking place last September.
Preserving What’s Temporary
Luna and a crew of helpers cleared 25,000 square feet of wall surfaces in preparation for this year’s event, he said. That includes all the murals from last year’s Meeting of Styles — not that the artists are offended.
Graffiti is often an illegal art form, so losing your creations is part of the culture, Luna said. After all, it might take only a few hours before a piece is reported by neighbors and buffed out by city crews or property owners, he said.
“The cool thing about our event is that our murals and art only lasts for one year,” Luna said. “Every year, 365 days later, we go back and we black everything out and we start all over.”
But this year’s creations will likely last much longer, as young adults will document Meeting of Styles as part of a photo challenge. Photographers will get two disposable cameras each, and a team of local artists will curate the photos for the October exhibition.
Vanessa Bly, a photographer who documents street art on the Southeast Side, said the challenge will push the photographers to slow down and pay attention to every detail as they make the most of their limited film. That may be a novel idea for young people who are used to virtually unlimited digital storage, she said.
A location for the exhibition is to be determined, but it will take place on the East Side, Bly said.
“We’re excited about going through the process of showing their work in a way that’s not so commonly done anymore,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for young people — a mix of experienced photographers and young people who have an interest in photography, but never really thought about it being something they want to do long term.”
The challenge is a throwback to the “early years of graffiti,” when writers would carry film cameras to document their creations — and to plan their escape routes in case they got caught, Luna said.
Luna, a former Walgreens photo technician, developed “all the pictures for all the guys in my crew,” he said. He has also maintained an archive of his own work dating back to 1998.
“Photography and graffiti go hand in hand,” he said. “… Ninety-nine percent of graffiti writers aged 30 and above have an archive of 35-millimeter film and 4-by-6 prints of their artwork.”
Photography has also helped graffiti spread across the world — including to Oaxacan artist Alex José, whose Alma Zapoteca collective uses art education to preserve Zapotec culture.
José credits a magazine featuring work from Meeting of Styles for inspiring him to become an artist.
Graffiti and street art “really started to take off” in Oaxaca as part of a wave of protest in the state in 2006, José said through translator and Meeting of Styles organizer Alex Galván.
Political and anarchist street art remains common, José said. As graffiti has gained more mainstream acceptance, Oaxacans will also hire writers to paint murals as they mark the start of Día de los Muertos, he said.
The work of Meeting of Styles artists “provided [me] a way to follow [my] dreams and a different perspective,” José said. “Especially being in Oaxaca, it made that kind of art more accessible — and art more accessible in general.”
For more information on this year’s Meeting of Styles, click here.
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