?? OPEN CALL: GRAFFITI ISSUE — LOUD, MESSY, POLITICAL, UNAPOLOGETIC, ANONYMOUS OR NOT ?? We’re looking for the rule-breakers, the wall-scribblers, the midnight painters, the poets with paint on their fingers—this one’s for you.

Our next zine issue is diving headfirst into the world of graffiti, street art, and public rebellion.

We want art that shouts, writing that provokes, and ideas that can’t be caged.

Whether you’re tagging underpasses, turning walls into protest, or scribbling resistance on a napkin—we want your work.

Graffiti didn’t start in the ’70s, it’s been around since humans figured out how to leave a mark.

From ancient Roman walls scrawled with political insults and crude jokes to Pompeii’s public declarations of love and shade, graffiti has always been about voice, resistance, and raw expression.

Fast-forward to 1970s New York City, where modern graffiti exploded from subway cars and crumbling brick walls.

Young people, mostly from marginalised communities, turned the city into their canvas, tagging names, claiming space, telling stories no one else would publish.

Graffiti became a way to exist loudly in a society that often ignored or erased them.

By the ’80s, graffiti was criminalised and commercialised. While police cracked down, galleries started cashing in.

Artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring bridged the street and the studio, but the core of graffiti stayed rooted in freedom, rebellion, and visibility.

Today, graffiti lives everywhere, from global art fairs to back alleys. It’s political, personal, poetic, and still illegal in most places. That’s part of its power.

It resists ownership. It speaks when nothing else can. It’s art for the people, raw, fast, and unfiltered.

So whether you're spraying protest on a boarded-up shopfront, writing love notes on lamp posts, or making zines in your bedroom, you’re part of this legacy.

This is your space to go raw, loud, political, personal, funny, furious, fearless.

No white cubes. No gallery rules. Just pure, unfiltered expression.

? We’re calling for:

• Graffiti, tags, stencils, paste-ups, stickers, murals
• Flash essays and manifestos
• Street photography and visual essays
• Poems from the pavement
• Rants, love letters, and sharp takes on public space
• Creative pieces on vandalism, voice, visibility, and visual noise

? Think: power, protest, play, and paint. If it challenges, cracks a system, or makes someone stop and feel something, send it. 

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