Most research describes the relationship between the contemporary phenomena denoted by the concepts graffiti and street art as complex. For example, graffiti and street art have been described in terms of a development, as well as closely related but different sociocultural contexts. However, the institutional discourses on graffiti and street art differ widely, and street art is, in contrast to graffiti, not stigmatized and rarely framed as a criminal activity. Consequently, there are also many cases where graffiti and street art are framed as a dichotomy, where the latter is positioned as creative and beautiful while the former is described as repetitive, ugly and unsophisticated. In contrast to such polarized understandings, street art have also been used as an umbrella term, denoting various kinds of informal image production in the public realm including pieces and throw-ups that in other cases would be defined as graffiti. Thus, while most research suggests that the terms graffiti and street art denote partially different phenomena, it seems to be particularly difficult to pinpoint a clear delineation between them.

This article departs from the assumption that that the concepts ‘graffiti’ and ‘street art’ themselves should be regarded as a part of the studied cultural context, and as such, empirical material rather than preconditioned categories from where the research depart. The concepts themselves are thus viewed as cultural phenomena in their own right, and as such, negotiated in time and space, similarly to the ‘content’ that they in a certain context denote. The article thus focuses on how the relationships between street art and graffiti are contextualized in various media during the last 30 years.