We walk through the streets of the Florentine section of Tel Aviv, looking at beautiful crimes on the walls. Elinoy Kisslove starts our tour of the graffiti around Florentine at one of the oldest pieces in the neighborhood. It depicts the assasination of Itzak Rabin. We learned about this piece months ago in a seminar and to see it in person was a bit surreal. As we walk, Elinoy points out different graffiti that have messages attached to them. There was graffiti representing coexistence between Israel and Palestinian by showing a stereotypical Israel hugging a stereotypical Palestinian. She also pointed out conversations artists have with each other by tagging their comments on each other’s wall (sounds familiar).
After the tour she took us to her workshop. There we were tasked to plan and paint graffiti that summarized a personal lesson from the trip. Many people choose to paint the issues with different religious sects within Israel. Others wanted to paint the issues we learned from Oden Rahav’s lecture about water usage. After we made our sketches, Elinoy taught us how to use spray paint on her privately owned and legal wall. She demonstrated how to do different styles of graffiti and how to add highlights and shadows. Then with limited time and colors, our groups had the freedom to paint. My experience was, I think, pretty similar to other groups. I immediately noticed I didn’t have the time, paint, or skill to do the ambitious piece I sketched out. Then came a stressful few minutes of painting bubble letters and stick figures on the fly. After our time was up we presented our graffiti to the judges, Amnon and Tina, and took a quick picture. Even though nobody could make the piece we planned, we all had fun learning the deeper significance of this illegal art and attempting the spray painting ourselves.