I walk to the Lake Merritt BART station in Oakland every day for my commute to work in San Francisco. For as long as I've lived in or frequented the neighborhood, there's been a tagger who leaves his/her mark in the form of the spraypainted outline of a cupcake. But on the morning of June 4th, this and all the other tags had been painted over. In their place were these magenta stenciled conch shells.
Overnight, the city crews had come and whitewashed away the old graff,
and an unknown artist had painted these very vaginal stencils on everything from the backs of signs to the mailbox. Or perhaps it was the artist who first created the blank canvas, and then populated it with a fresh, feminist statement?
On some surfaces, the shells come in pairs. On the fifth, the day after they appear, I snapped a picture of two together. I sent it to a (lesbian) friend, with an appropriately crass caption. Next morning, I see that the very same set has been tagged over. I again shoot the snapshot to said friend, this time with the caption "Homophobes!"
Somehow the series doesn't feel finished. I take a shot of the mailbox on the 11th. The pink stands bold against the once-blue, now-blank surface... this one feels different, marked on such a familiar fixture--on government property, a symbol of the state.
The only shell painted on a non-neutral background is near the Oakland museum, on a power box by the entrance to the parking lot of the conference center, which I pass through daily to j-walk across International. It's even more striking, in some ways, against the green. I wonder how intentional the placement of this one, in particular, was. Vagina Power Box, I call it. I like to give the artist the benefit of the doubt:
vagina power box, vs vagina
power box. This one, at least, stands untagged. And somehow that feels hopeful.
I walk to the Lake Merritt BART station in Oakland every day for my commute to work in San Francisco. For as long as I've lived in or frequented the neighborhood, there's been a tagger who leaves his/her mark in the form of the spraypainted outline of a cupcake. But on the morning of June 4th, this and all the other tags had been painted over. In their place were these magenta stenciled conch shells.
Overnight, the city crews had come and whitewashed away the old graff, and an unknown artist had painted these very vaginal stencils on everything from the backs of signs to the mailbox. Or perhaps it was the artist who first created the blank canvas, and then populated it with a fresh, feminist statement?
On some surfaces, the shells come in pairs. On the fifth, the day after they appear, I snapped a picture of two together. I sent it to a (lesbian) friend, with an appropriately crass caption. Next morning, I see that the very same set has been tagged over. I again shoot the snapshot to said friend, this time with the caption "Homophobes!"
Somehow the series doesn't feel finished. I take a shot of the mailbox on the 11th. The pink stands bold against the once-blue, now-blank surface... this one feels different, marked on such a familiar fixture--on government property, a symbol of the state.
The only shell painted on a non-neutral background is near the Oakland museum, on a power box by the entrance to the parking lot of the conference center, which I pass through daily to j-walk across International. It's even more striking, in some ways, against the green. I wonder how intentional the placement of this one, in particular, was. Vagina Power Box, I call it. I like to give the artist the benefit of the doubt: vagina power box, vs vagina power box. This one, at least, stands untagged. And somehow that feels hopeful.
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