The graffiti and street art of Tel Aviv reflect various aspects of life in Israel. Frequently representing traumas and politics, the true purpose of graffiti is to give a voice to everyone who wants to scream.
While traveling in Israel we saw graffiti scattered across buildings,fences, and bus stations - a surprising amount of this extremely vibrant street art. When I heard that there was going to be a tour all about these pieces of art I was excited mainly because I could view it outside instead of in that bus station, that to put it as frankly as possible, smelt of pee. Anyway excitement was there and as we loaded the bus. After a very long bus ride we made it into Tel Aviv where we went to sort of like a plaza to meet with Galit from Grafitiyul, a group that gives tour of graffiti in Tel Aviv. While we waited for her we all spotted a record store and ran over there immediately amazed by all of the cool records. That distracted us long enough for Galit to arrive, and after telling a joke about her name being like gal gadots name but with the word eat, we began. She told us there were three things graffiti artists value - danger, location and then she was cut off. She proceeded to tell us all about taggers and how these people write their names on their work to claim terroritiries. Before moving on she told us that there is a difference between street art and graffiti; street art is commissioned, graffiti is not and is very illegal (at least if you get caught then it is, but if not you are not caught it is totally fine!) Sometimes a graffiti artist will become very famous. We learned about an artist named John Kiss. He was on a soap opera and when the show was cancelled he got very depressed. Eventually he created an amazing graffiti about a group of artists who all died at 27. He just did not want to die at 27 so he created this huge art piece and installed it while disguised as a civil worker on Rosh Hashanah eve !!! He almost got caught and wound up locking himself in his house for a month. Moving on we saw another artist Dede who has done graffiti images with band aids everywhere around the world. Next was an art shop - run by a guy named Amnon. I wanted to buy a cool bear figurine but the artist was famous and it was 200 shekels!!! Needless to say I ranted on and on about that, but it was very fun besides that slight hiccup, and there was some very cool art there.
So yeah that was our graffiti art tour of Tel Aviv. It was very cool and I enjoyed seeing everything!
I almost forgot to say that we also spray painted an old record with two little penguins, saw braille graffiti which was really cool, and addressed issues of swastikas appearing in Tel Aviv.
After the tour everyone just waited for the bus and took selfies with a pigeon….. just a normal day in icnext.
So yeah that was our graffiti art tour of Tel Aviv. It was very cool and I enjoyed seeing everything!
I almost forgot to say that we also spray painted an old record with two little penguins, saw braille graffiti which was really cool, and addressed issues of swastikas appearing in Tel Aviv.
After the tour everyone just waited for the bus and took selfies with a pigeon….. just a normal day in icnext.