Suchergebnisse

The small town of Orgosolo in the mountains of Sardinia is known for its murals: hundreds of them in a town of only 5,000 inhabitants. although murals exist throughout Sardinia, those of Orgosolo are noteworthy because of their political content. This article describes the origins of the mural tradition in the events of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the town. The combination of a left-wing council and youth group, as well as the powerful influence of an art teacher, led to the start of a process that continues to this day. The murals are classified into four interrelated themes: war, resistance, ethnic pride and resonance. But most importantly, the relevance of the mural tradition is placed in the context of the rejection by local people of northern Italian stereotypes which display them as backward shepherds and bandits, wedded inexorably to tradition and the rejection of progress.

Behind the iron grip which Israel maintains on the Gaza Strip, there exists a vibrant tradition of painting murals and graffiti on outdoor walls. The origins and contemporary form of this tradition are considered in this article. The painting of murals and graffiti in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has its roots in the first intifada which began in 1987. As part of the resistance to Israeli occupation and repression, young people, at great personal risk, mobilised popular support through their clandestine artwork. The second intifada, beginning in 2000, saw the rise of Hamas as a force to be reckoned with, not least in terms of the increasing sophistication of its murals and graffiti, which paid special attention to calligraphy. Finally, with the departure of Israeli soldiers and settlers in 2005 and the takeover of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2007 this organisation came to dominate the walls. Murals in Gaza today cover a number of themes: Israeli oppression, Palestinian resistance, martyrs, prisoners and Palestinian aspirations – in particular, freedom and statehood, and the right to return.

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In Northern Ireland's Long Kesh prison in the late 1980s and 1990s, prisoners from each of the loyalist and republican groups painted highly politicized murals on the walls in their respective wings. This article seeks to examine these murals as both a symbol and a means whereby the politically motivated prisoners sought to appropriate the space of the prison for their own purposes. Their resistance, expressed in this and other ways, was not merely to the pains of imprisonment, the stripping of individuality and identity which was at the heart of the prison system. Rather imprisonment was seized as an opportunity to advance political understanding and build revolutionary structures whereby the prison was seen as one more front in their respective wars — that of republicans against the British state, and that of loyalists against republican insurgence. Each in their own way, republican and loyalist prisoners created virtual "liberated zones" within the prison and in doing so prepared for political power and conflict transformation on the other side of imprisonment.