Train Graffiti in Canada
The Railway Offers Urban Art in its Purest, Most Accessible Form
Feb 1, 2009
Living in small-town Canada rarely affords citizens the opportunity to experience urban art. Unless, of course, they live in one of the many communities served by the Canadian Railroad. The railroad is accessible to 75% of the population of Canada and the United States, which means that the bulk of North Americans, both urban and rural, experience urban art in the form of train graffiti on almost a daily basis.
Graffiti Tags
Most train graffiti in Canada takes the form of tags. Graffiti tags are the signatures of graffiti artists and artist collectives. These stylized signatures range from simple initials drawn with permanent markers to the elaborate spray-painted hip-hop tags.
The colorful hip-hop style of tagging originated in the New York City subway system, and can now be found on freight trains, trestles, tunnel walls and buildings all over the world.
Hip-hop tag artists generally work under an alias, one that reflects their personal style or philosophy while protecting their identity. These aliases are often misspelled, or spelled phonetically. "Theery", "Madmahn", "Tuff Gurl" and "JennySis" are examples of graffiti tag aliases.
Graffiti Crews
Sometimes an entire train car will be tagged by a collection of graffiti artists, called a "crew". Crew tagging gives artists the opportunity to work collectively while still leaving their individual marks, and to fully "claim" or cover the car’s surface. They are also a statement of belonging.
Graffiti Pieces
Graffiti "pieces", short for "masterpieces", are detailed works of art that go beyond simple tagging. Portraits, urban skylines and cartoon images are common among train graffiti in Canada.
While graffiti tags can be artistically rendered, graffiti pieces are where vandalism and high art intersect. Canadian graffiti artists like Thesis Sahib (also a musician) have achieved international acclaim for their work both on the street and in galleries, and artists like Jasper’s Tristan Overy use traditional mediums like acrylic on canvas to create graffiti-inspired images.
The Politics of Graffiti
In Canada, graffiti is considered vandalism so all graffiti artists – those who quickly scrawl their initials in grease pencil and those whose pieces are beautiful enough to arrest your breath – are technically criminals. Train graffiti is doubly illegal as it necessitates trespassing in rail yards, which are private property. But while Canadians are by and large a law-abiding lot, few object to the mosaic of train graffiti that passes through their daily lives.
Graffiti often incorporates political and social themes, but even the act of tagging or making graffiti art is subversive. Canadian train graffiti is immune to censoring market forces; it is accessible to all Canadians, including the poor, homeless and those living in rural areas, who wouldn’t otherwise have the means to experience urban art; it occupies a canvas available to any artist willing to cross the CN property line regardless of age, sex, race, material background or level of artistic talent and it’s commercial-free in a landscape increasingly saturated with advertising. Train graffiti, in short, is Canada’s purest public art form.
