Description
Booktitle: Paradisön
Author: Tobias Barenthis Lindblad
Paperback
Published: 2023
Language: Swedish
Pages: 216
Dimensions: 17,2 x 24,2 x 2 cm / 6.8 x 9.5 x 0.8 inch.
On New Year’s Day 1985, Aktuellt broadcast a report to the entire Swedish people: In Östberga in southern Stockholm, some young people paint the walls with New York-inspired graffiti. The painting on the concrete walls in the Million Programme district of Östberga took place at night without permission. When some of the painters got caught, the residents of the district had to vote against or for more walls to be painted via the rent notice. Östberga, the paradise island, became an experiment in a designed living environment. The first paintings remained for almost twenty years and influenced generations of graffiti enthusiasts both in and outside the district.
In the book Paradise Island, graffiti artists from five decades tell about how graffiti took root, grew and developed in Östberga. And not only there. Despite the district’s island-like location, the news spread in newspapers and television. Young people from all over Stockholm visited Östberga to see the paintings for real. It is Östberga’s creative youth who have placed the area on the map. Without the striking graffiti artworks, even fewer would find their way there, DN wrote in 1985. Generation after generation of young Östberga residents took the paintings to heart and became a first encounter with an identifiable aesthetic. It was art by young people for young people. For some of the graffiti artists, the interest became a gateway to creative professions. For others, a leisure hobby that continues well into middle age. At the same time, the youngest interviewed generation, born in the late 00s, has barely had time to start with their interest in graffiti for real. With previously unpublished images and newly taken image material by Stockholm depictor Per Englund, Paradise Island is an exciting story about how young people shape their living environment and about how art is inherited.
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