The Church on the Subway Walls
Photo by James Garman on Unsplash
It was recently reported in the news that the street artist Banksy had sold a piece at auction, coming with a $30 million dollar price tag. This was the highest price paid for a single piece by Banksy.
The transitus of Banksy from anonymous producer of stencils on discarded carton fragments left on the street, to (still) anonymous purveyor of multi-million dollar works sold at high-end auction houses was an interesting one. Part of the interest was that Banksy was one who brought international attention to the resurgence of graffiti as an art form.
Art critics and cultural analysts have given attention to the phenomenon of street art, commenting on its artistic merit, its commercialisation (as was the case with Banksy) and the renegotiation of public space by the artform. By contrast, the Church has given little if any consideration to it, very often preferring the sophistication and the loftiness of the higher arts.
Which leads to the question: can the Church learn anything from graffiti?
While one must not ignore the arguments about vandalising public space for one’s own benefit, confining the consideration of street artists to just selfish co-option of public space is crude at best. More significantly, it is quite possible that the Church’s passing over of the implications of urban art may be to its detriment.
First, there are historical and cultural antecedents linking the church to graffiti. In the ancient Church, before there were frescoes and icons, the earliest examples of ecclesial art constituted scrapings on the ground and the walls of streets and tombs. These include the depiction of Christ as the Good Shepherd in the catacombs of Priscilla.
Second, graffiti artists like Banksy are doing more than glibly “expressing themselves”. The fact that works like Banksys are gathering public attention is making many stop and think about the role of public space itself, and the relationship that individual actors have with the public space. To bring this back to the graffiti artist, the artist practices on a space that is controlled by others, and possibly recognises that because of that lack of control of space renders the practice ephemeral, which tempers the graffiti artist’s sense of triumphalism (As an aside, I explore the topic of public space in my book Justice, Unity & the Hidden Christ). Put in this way, the graffiti artist operates on what the Jesuit social theorist Michel de Certeau calls in his Practice of Everyday Life a “tactical” way of living – a playful embracing of a space, followed by the release of control that space.
Why this conception of inhabiting public space is significant for Christianity is because Certeau suggests that the Church must similarly recognise that, as a pilgrim through this world to the next, it occupies space “tactically”. As such, it must not seek to presume that where Christians stand is theirs to own and control, for eventually other agents would come and be far more efficient at wresting control of that space.
At the same that the Church moves through one public space, however, it must also not forget that the Church declares to that public space the impending arrival of another public – the reign of Christ. The occupation of that space is not for its own benefit, should be the opportunity to open itself out in practices that declare the reign of God, such as the worship of the one true God and the full array of the practices of mercy.
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