Illegal Urban Art and Naples

between mappings and contemporary iconoclasm

Abstract

Urban art, as a form of expression that directly engages with the social and spatial context, plays a crucial role in the transformation and reinterpretation of contemporary urban spaces. Beyond the now-established initiatives of urban regeneration, which are excluded from this contribution, numerous other realities have embraced it as a powerful agent of change—capable of breaking silence and social isolation, and of stimulating a new dialogue between citizens and the broader world. Naples, in its complex and intricate stratifications, continuously responds to the illegal incursions of artists from all over the world. This welcoming peculiarity makes the city a gratifying stage for this aesthetic language, which evolves through ever-changing codes. In this context, urban art develops within a personal dialectic between aesthetic inclusivity and semiotic closure, creating a stratified and varied urban experience. With a persistent and dynamic attitude, it finds its expression not just in so-called non-places or architectural interstices, but on new artistic surfaces that are now the sites of contemporary aesthetic incursions.

This study does not aim to provide an exhaustive historical overview of urban art in Naples but rather seeks to highlight a specific focus: the investigation of illegal aesthetic languages that are systematically distributed, almost as if to map the urban surfaces that guide the public’s gaze. In contrast, interventions that are forcefully imposed on any available surface, with no method other than attitude and quantity, are examined as an act of contemporary iconoclasm. In pursuit of this aim, and with an inevitable formal and conceptual opposition, the study examines two case studies: gra?ti writers cyop&kaf’s artistic activity within Naples’ historical center and suburbs, and the interventions of the German 1UP Crew in Naples, dating back to the end of 2020, with a particular attention to their subversive presence on the brutalist architecture of the peripheral neighborhood of Scampia, which has left a strong impact on the popular reality of the place, both from an aesthetic and social point of view. urban art