‘Chinese Style Graffiti’ by the Kwan-Yin Clan

In China, the urban phenomenon of graffiti art (tuya yishu 涂鸦艺术) emerged in the mid-90s, and since the beginning of the 21st century, it has quickly acquired a large following among young artists in the major cities of the country. The KwanYin Clan (Guanyin 观音) is one of the most representative crew of the so-called “Chinese Style Graffiti”. Founded in Beijing (2006), the aim of this crew is to merge Euro-American graffiti tradition with Chinese artistic culture, in order to create an “in-between” style. In all its “pieces”, it uses intermixed elements and techniques both Chinese and Western, exploring the fusion of graffiti art with China’s social environment. In the work entitled Shengong yijiang 神工意匠 (Ars divina, 2010), one of its most important “piece”, KwanYin Clan creates a 3D graffiti piece using Chinese characters, treating public walls like horizontal calligraphic scrolls full of tags and colophons, and writing ancient poetry in “running script” (xingshu 行书) by means of spray. Through the analysis of this work, this paper aims at: i) reconstructing the artistic philosophy of KwanYin Clan, focusing on the harmonic blending of ancient patterns and modern materials, Western styles and Chinese techniques; ii) revealing how Chinese writers have shaped a new aesthetics highly contemporary but deeply rooted in traditional Chinese culture; iii) showing how Chinese artists assimilate graffiti art languages from the post-modern Western avant-garde movement to reflect on China’s contemporary transformations; iv) demonstrating how, in China as everywhere, the globalizing tendencies as well as the desire for specificity and particularity can be fulfilled within transculturality.