An Unexpected Country Has Become a Mecca for Subversive Street Art

New York City has traditionally been considered the premier mecca for street artists around the world. "It's hard to imagine what New Yorkers experienced in the early seventies, as they watched their city become steadily tattooed with hieroglyphics," wrote Dimitri and Gregor Ehrlich New York magazine in 2007. "Some saw it as vandalism and a symbol of urban decay. But for the writers who risked life, limb, and arrest, and the teenagers, filmmakers, and, eventually, curators who admired them, graffiti was an art form."