| There can be no mural without a wall. This simple condition of mural making greatly impacts its planning, process, and reception, and largely distinguishes it from other forms of public art. A mural must be painted on site, not constructed in an artist's studio and then moved to a specific location. The painting of the mural becomes, in folkloristic terms, a kind of “performance,” its final incarnation emerging from a series of dialogic encounters between “artist” and “audience.” Rather than “installed” in the built landscape, murals are literally painted on the landscape, becoming meaningful visual stimuli, replete with memory and history for those who live, play, and work among them. Murals occupy a particularly unique place in the urban landscape—neither about place or a part of place exclusively, but rather a conjoining of the two. It occupies a paradoxical space in the landscape, a kind of “meta-place,” continually referencing the landscape to which it has become an inextricable part. Yet while there is a vast literature on “place” and “landscape” from such fields as cultural geography, anthropology, and folklore which has done much to advance the understanding of “place” as a cultural process, the role of community murals, or public art more generally, has been largely overlooked in considerations of this place-making process. This dissertation explores the role of murals in the urban landscape, through an ethnographic study of the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, which has painted over two thousand murals in Philadelphia since its beginnings as the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network in 1984, making Philadelphia the “most muraled city” in the world. While residents are often unaware of their city's unique distinction, most can vividly describe a personal connection with a particular mural. Murals have become, literally, an inseparable part of Philadelphia. This dissertation explores the dynamics of the “art worlds” of these community murals, focusing on the “Families Are Victims Too” memorial wall which remembers fifteen young victims of street violence in Southwest Philadelphia. |
