I was one of those people who scorned at street graffiti being called art, now I am saved. But I am not going to call it Street Art or Wall Art or Contemporary Art, I’m going to call it Art. There is Art everywhere in Shoreditch – on a locksmith’s door, on a Punjabi restaurant’s shutter, on lamp posts. Some are calls, proclaiming life, proclaiming revolution. Many talk about love, happiness and the joy of being able to create.

But tour guides have infiltrated these streets too. There are groups of people following these lecturing men. There are also those men with fluorescent coats trying to whitewash these walls.

I don’t know who these artists are. There is no back story I know. Some walls are done and redone- by many artists I can tell.

Here are a few pictures –

‘A wall is a very big weapon. It is one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with.’ – Banksy

(avrina)

Location: Great Eastern Street, London, UK

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Published by Aadhi Avrina ஆதி அவ்ரீனா

அவ்ரீனா Avrina (1992, Tamil Nadu) is a trans poet and writer living in Berlin. They are many poets, spirits and voices sharing one body. They write places, beings and times. Obsessed with memories that pervade and evade, often of childhood, avrina’s writing is an ebb and flow characteristic of their desire for the sea. avrina’s story won the Short Fiction / University of Essex International Short Story Prize 2021 and works have been nominated, among others, for the Craft Short Fiction Prize, Indiana Review Fiction Prize, the Berlin Writing Prize, and the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize. A devoted bardic poet, avrina has read at Bangalore Literature Festival, Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters Kerala, Prosanova Hildesheim, Academy of Arts Berlin, the LCB, Poesie Festival Berlin, etc. apart from being published in Prairie Schooner, Sinn und Form, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Stoff aus Luft, Kaalachuvadu, etc. avrina was a literature fellow of the city of Berlin in 2024 and is currently represented by Kanishka Gupta at Writer's Side. www.avrinajos.net.

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