“People want good graffiti”: Tensions, contradictions, and everyday politics surrounding graffiti in Hanoi, Vietnam

Graffiti has become a ubiquitous feature of urban landscapes, with words and images splashed across public and private surfaces sparking passionate debates about the meaning, implications and legality of these urban inscriptions. Yet to date, little academic research has been conducted on graffiti and street art in the Asian context, and we found none on Vietnam’s thriving scene. Against the backdrop of a socialist state with little tolerance for public protest, we investigate how and by whom graffiti is created and to what extent it transgresses the norms of public space in the country’s capital, Hanoi. We analyze how young graffiti writers negotiate the social, physical and cultural boundaries that serve as both deterrents and catalysts for graffiti creation, and ask whether strategies of conformity or everyday resistance are employed to create their works. As the effects of globalization and urbanization on the Asian region and the tactics employed by citizens to negotiate censorship and state-imposed restrictions have been closely studied, we situate our work within these broader debates.