street art in Stockholm - Gatukonst.se

window. She is yelling. “I’ve called the police, you vandal!”
I am on my knees under a pedestrian bridge trying to focus my camera on a few
stickers. It is a fertile place. It’s ten o’clock on a sunny Saturday morning.
Even though many equate street art with vandalism, interest is growing, indicated
by the walking tours of the city that the Stockholm City Museum organised in the
summer of 2006. Publicity for the ‘illegal art’ was so great that extra walks had to
be scheduled.
Street art is local, and perishable. It is best experienced ‘in situ’ and can be gone
the day after your viewing. Paradoxically it is probably more seen and preserved
than ever before since it has a second life on websites and blogs run by artists
and enthusiasts across the world. In Sweden, streetart.com, streetart.se and atlasmuren.se
are the most established.
For someone wanting to learn about street art in Stockholm, the Slussen
traffi c hub is a great place to begin. A stroll through its passages and stairways is
like fi nding yourself in a well-stocked but badly organised archive. The area, allowed
to decay while waiting for an imminent reconstruction, exhibits for busy passersby
the remains of pioneer works and the latest by newcomers. To hold the cracked
wall together a while longer, someone has attached a large band-aid.
The other major site is the Atlas area under the St. Eriks Bridge. It has been
called Stockholm’s ugliest area, but is something of an intranet for street art, with
a concentration of works from recent years. And for every week there are new
posters, ‘bead tiles’ and stickers.
This is no encyclopaedia, no attempt at comprehensive documentation. On the
contrary, the selection is narrow — I have chosen those that I like. And skewed — my
own neighbourhood is clearly over-represented.
Nonetheless, I hope this provides a picture of what can happen when art is
created outside the framework of established culture, on the street, available for all.
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