Jul 3, 2009

Reflections on a Traffic Sign

One evening, when I began to think it was time to get out of the industrial district, I found this enigmatic example of street art. A row of protest stickers had been stretched across a directional traffic sign.

I was reminded of San Francisco artist Miranda Richardson's observation that protest art these days tends not to be as explicitly political as it once was. It's not as policy-based, she observed, mainly because "there isn't an overt movement."

The protest art on the traffic sign seemed to confirm Richardson's observation. It struck me as being a very good example of street-based conceptual art. What was the scantily-clad woman doing? Was she eating a hot dog? Or a dynamite stick? Why was there a trade mark in the upper right of the sticker? Why had the stickers been applied to a traffic sign and not to a wall?