Skip to content
Home/ Voices in Aerosol: Youth Culture, Institutional Attunement, and Graffiti in Urban Mexico
Voices in Aerosol: Youth Culture, Institutional Attunement, and Graffiti in Urban Mexico

Voices in Aerosol: Youth Culture, Institutional Attunement, and Graffiti in Urban Mexico

No customer reviews yet ISBN 9781477327678 University of Texas Press

2024 Visual Communication Division Award, National Communication Association
2025 Philosophy of Communication, Theory, and Critique Division Distinguished Book Award, National Communication Association
2025 Winans-Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address, National Communication Association

How a city government in central Mexico evolved from waging war on graffiti in the early 2000s to sanctioning its creation a decade later, and how youth navigated these changing conditions for producing art.

The local government, residents, and media outlets in León, Mexico, treated graffiti as a disease until the state began sponsoring artistic graffiti through a program of its own. In Voices in Aerosol, the first book-length study of state-sponsored graffiti, Caitlin Frances Bruce considers the changing perceptions and recognition of graffiti artists, their right to the city, and the use of public space over the span of eighteen years (2000-2018). Focusing on the midsized city of León, Bruce offers readers a look at the way negotiations with the neoliberal state unfolded at different levels and across decades.

Issues brought to light in this case study, such as graffiti as a threat and graffiti as a sign of gentrification, resonate powerfully with those germane to other urban landscapes throughout the Western Hemisphere and beyond. Combining archival work, interviews, considerations of urban planning, local politics in Mexico, and insights gained by observing graffiti events and other informal artistic encounters, Bruce offers a new lens through which to understand the interplay between sanctioned and unsanctioned forms of cultural expression. Ultimately, Voices in Aerosol builds a strong case for graffiti as a contested tool for "voicing" public demands.

About the author

Product details

BrandUniversity of Texas Press
Pub dateJan 9, 2024
ISBN-101477327673
ISBN-139781477327678
Hardcover304.0 pages
LanguageEnglish
Dimensions9 × 1.4 × 6 in
Weight1 lb
Last updated 2026-07-18 20:10
$60.65
In stock soon — order now to reserve your copy
Delivery by Monday, September 28, 2026
Qty
Sign in to Add to Saved list
Free delivery on orders over $35.
15-day returns. Any reason.
Secure checkout. We never store card details.

Readers who bought this also bought

More from Caribbean & Latin American
See all
Americas Revealed: Collecting Colonial and Modern Latin American Art in the United States
<p>In <i>The Americas Revealed</i>, distinguished art historian and curator Edward J. Sullivan brings together a vibrant group of essays that explore the formation, in the United States, of public and private collections of art from the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Americas.</p><p>The contributors to this volume trace the major milestones and emerging approaches to collecting and presenting Spanish Colonial and modern Latin American art by museums, galleries, private collections, and corporations from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century. In chronicling the roles played by determined collectors from New York to San Francisco, the essays examine a range of subjects from MoMA's mid-twentieth-century acquisition strategies to the growing taste on the West Coast for the work of Diego Rivera. They consider the impact of various political shifts on art collecting, from reactions against the "American exceptionalism" of the Monroe Doctrine to the aesthetic biases of government-sponsored art academies in Mexico, Rio de Janeiro, and Havana. The final three chapters focus on living collectors such as Roberta and Richard Huber, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, and Estrellita B. Brodsky.</p><p>A thorough and definitive account of the changing course of private and public collections and their important connection to underlying political and cultural relations between the United States and Latin American countries, this volume gives a rare glimpse into the practice of collecting from the collectors' own point of view.</p><p>In addition to the editor, contributors to this volume are Miriam Margarita Basilio, Estrellita B. Brodsky, Vanessa K. Davidson, Anna Indych-López, Ronda Kasl, Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Berit Potter, Mari Carmen Ramírez, Joseph Rishel, Delia Solomons, and Suzanne Stratton-Pruitt.</p>
$32.63