Twelfth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

Now a decade old, Instagram has become the most popular mobile image application, featuring 43,911,055 images alone that are tagged with #graffiti and 9,937,228 tagged with #graffitiart as of May, 2020. Despite very limited search capabilities, the platform remains a wealth of images of graffiti art, and an arena ripe for research possibilities, including examination of graffiti image hashtagging for evidence of time, space, artist, and style documentation. Well into the second month of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States, specifically on two days in late April and early May of 2020, I screenshot all posts and their respective images on Instagram that were tagged with #covidgraffiti (131 posts on April 30) and #coronavirusgraffiti (144 posts on May 5). I examined how images of graffiti posted on Instagram were tagged in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic, along with the themes, icons, characters, and text common across this sample. Previous research on graffiti art processes and description formed the basis for inclusion of general categories of graffiti work types. I noted the appearance of visual themes, such as toilet paper, masks, and images representing the virus itself. Also noted were numerous political references and messages of both caution and of thanks to medical professionals and delivery workers. I was also able to determine which tags were most popularly co-assigned to the works in my sample, revealing distinct patterns of artistic representation of the virus and associated issues via Instagram.