One of the best ways to gain a deeper understanding of the sentiments, energies, and tensions that animate any place is to look at what people write, scribble, paint, and erase on walls and other surfaces.”
Kyle Craig (he/him)
PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology and the Middle East and North African Studies Program
Kyle Craig is a PhD candidate and graduate assistant in the Department of Anthropology and the Middle East and North African Studies Program. His research explores the graffiti and street art scene in urban Jordan, within which youth are attempting to create spaces of belonging, visibility, and leisure against the backdrop of neoliberal urban transformation and refugee migrations. Kyle served as a Franke Graduate Fellow with the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities during the 2022–23 academic year.
How would you describe your research and/or work to a non-academic audience?
My research is broadly concerned with how young cultural producers remake cities through public art amidst various challenges, such as state regulation of public expression and other social inequalities inscribed into urban landscapes. I examine this topic in relation to the robust graffiti and street art scene in Amman, Jordan, which experienced rapid growth following the 2011 uprisings across Southwest Asia and North Africa, sometimes referred to as "The Arab Spring."
At a time when regional conflict, refugee migrations, and popular discontent prompted significant individual, state, and non-governmental organization (NGO) investment in public art in Jordan, this project chronicles how young street artists creatively and strategically work within and outside networks of institutional art patronage and regulation to mobilize their ideal future visions for the city.
Tell us what inspired your research and/or work.
My research came about while exploring Amman and photographing graffiti and street art in 2015. One of the best ways to gain a deeper understanding of the sentiments, energies, and tensions that animate any place is to look at what people write, scribble, paint, and erase on walls and other surfaces. Amman's walls are filled with such material, from anonymous love notes, poetry, and political slogans written with a single spray can, to large-scale murals covering the entire side of a 12-story building. These wall writings and drawings are ephemeral archives of life in the city, and I was inspired to use them as a starting point for an academic examination of urban life and politics.
Many current studies of graffiti and street art focus primarily on the content of finished artworks or writings. My ethnographic approach to graffiti and street art explores the daily lives of young artists, asking how their relationships to Amman's past, present, and future shape their artistic practices. I also look into networks of state and institutional art patronage to better understand the role of public art in projects of state branding, international diplomacy, and urban development.
What is the biggest potential impact or implication of your work?
The 2011 uprisings energized a significant uptick in scholarly interest in the intersections of art and political struggle in the region due to the prominent role of music, performance, poetry, and graffiti in fostering collective energies of dissent and political reimagination. I contribute to a growing body of research addressing what new approaches states, cultural institutions, and NGOs have since adopted toward these art practices or how young artists maintain tenuous coalitions with powerful institutions that enable, constrain, or reroute their efforts. More broadly, my dissertation is an ethnographic account of how to define and locate the politics of youths' cultural practices beyond limiting paradigms of either compliance or resistance.
Why Northwestern?
When I first began conceptualizing my project while completing my MA degree, a mentor recommended I read my dissertation adviser, Dr. Jessica Winegar's book, Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt. This book provided a roadmap for designing my dissertation and continues to profoundly impact my thinking about the politics of art worlds. I applied to Northwestern's doctoral program in anthropology in large part because I aspired to work with Dr. Winegar. Since beginning graduate studies, I have found a lovely and inspiring community of mentors, colleagues, and friends in the Department of Anthropology, the Middle East and North African Studies Program, and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities.
How do you unwind after a long day?
Most of my time outside of work is spent hanging out with my spouse and our newborn. As hobbies, I play guitar and tend to my plants. A few colleagues and I also enjoy attending concerts throughout Chicago, primarily to see local and touring hardcore and metal bands.
What books are on your bedside table?
I just finished reading two excellent memoirs – Story of a City: A Childhood in Amman by Abd Al-Rahman Munif and Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H.
Tell us about a current achievement or something you're working on that excites you.
I am excited about my forthcoming research article, co-authored with anthropologist Dr. Michael Vicente Pérez (University of Memphis), titled "Rooting the Palestinian Shatat in Jordan: Art, Objects, and the Matter of Belonging." This article will be published in the Journal of Palestine Studies in December. We examine how the artistic and material practices of Palestinian refugees in Jordan, such as mural-making in refugee camps, connect exiled Palestinians to the broader Palestinian people and to their homeland in the context of protracted displacement.
I am also working on a collaborative writing project with anthropologist Dr. Maurice Rafael Magaña (University of Arizona). In this project, we are drawing on our respective research in Amman and Los Angeles to think about how street art participates in the production and maintenance of cross-border communities.
Image caption: Kyle standing next to graffiti and street art by Yara Hindawi, Siner (IG: @_siner_), and Wesam Shadid (IG: @wizegraffiti).
Publish Date: November 21, 2023
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