Abstract
This paper explores how graffiti removal practices—often seen as mundane concealing tasks—can produce visually compelling outcomes that are reminiscent of what they attempt to erase. These unintended visual outcomes, marked by awkward color patches, rough textures, or transparent traces, challenge the boundary between erasure and expression. Hereby, they raise critical questions about authorship, intention, and the role of the viewer that are from long-standing debates within visual culture and art theory particularly throughout the 20th century. Focusing on examples of removals in Istanbul, the study employs a form-based visual analysis to classify different types of graffiti removal across the city. This classification is not merely descriptive; it also serves as an interpretive framework to understand how these architectural surfaces contribute to the visual narrative of the urban landscape, eventually transforming into what may be called urban tales. The research argues that such removal acts, despite lacking deliberate artistic intention, give rise to a spontaneous visual language that reshapes the city’s collective memory. These surfaces, stuck between the cycle of creation and annihilation, form a self-sustaining urban gallery, where repetition, layering, and erasure construct a living archive of image-based communication. Rather than being the opposite of graffiti, removal becomes its partner in a continuous dialogue; both contributing to how the city is read, remembered, and perceived. Thus, by turning our attention to what remains, this study invites a reconsideration of image-making, urban representation, and narration in contemporary cities.
Presenters
Burcu KayhanStudent, Master's Degree, Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey Eylül Deniz Akkuzu
Student, Music, Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Urban Narratives, Graffiti Removal, Unintended Authorship, Interpretation, Public Space, Memory
