Beijing Design Week: Tagging Along with Graffiti Artist Niels "Shoe" Meulman

Noticed any new street art adorning the uncommonly bare walls of the Imperial City? Chances are, if it’s part of Converse’s new street exhibition “Off Canvas,” it’s not just the haphazard scribbling of your average hutong hoodlum, but more likely the work of an international artist (with a long list of credentials). For 2011 Beijing Design Week, Converse is hosting an exhibition of works that span the whole of Beijing, popping up in its commercial centers and creeping through its alleyways and rooftops.

Word and image are one in "Off Canvas," which celebrates the creative underbelly of Beijing through typography and graphic design, claiming music, fashion, skate and independent art among its artists' many inspirations. It’s been done before, but with a bevy of highly experienced graphic and typography artists – think Ben Eine, Ying Yonghui, Nod Young, Neville Brody and Benny Luk, and with the uncompromising Niels “Shoe” Meulman at the top of the list – there’s some work worth catching before it disappears from the streets. In the '80s, Meulman made a name for himself, customizing the style of European graffiti from the streets of Amsterdam with his simple trademark tag – Shoe.

We caught up with Meulman after his talk at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art this past Thursday, where he spoke about Calligraffiti, (his eponymous book, as well as the term he coined for his artwork, which resides somewhere in the spectrum between calligraphy and graffiti) and his pieces in "Off Canvas," which channel the power of reversal and opposition.

What inspired you to brand the whole of Amsterdam with your name from the very beginning?

It’s a tough question, because I don’t really know. It’s strange. But I think with graffiti – also with all the other graffiti writers I know – when you start doing it, just writing your name on the wall, you don’t really understand why you do it. It’s more like a natural thing – an urge – that you want to do. Only much later then, when you have developed to get a bit further, then you start saying, “Why did I start?”

Like your question, I question this to myself a lot, too. I think it’s kind of a philosophical answer. I think it is the will to show that you exist. Especially in the big city, because there’s a lot of people. It’s about the individual, you know? You don’t want to be like everyone else, you want to be different. You want people to notice that you are alive. So that’s – I think – the main inspiration.

And does the compulsion ever go away?

No, not really no. The stage maybe is different sometimes. Like, I do less work in the street – but still, I was happy to do a lot of street work here. But I also paint canvases and paintings … so then they’re in a gallery or a museum. So the stage is different, but it’s the same game. I call it the name game. It gets your name out.

You could divide your career into two major phases: You started out tagging in the streets, and then you delved into advertising and had your own graphic design firm. Did the two ever feel at odds with each other?

Well, I couldn’t go back to design or advertising anymore. But I do use the experience that I had during those years. I think every phase that I went through it sort of all adds up to what I’m doing now. So they are in harmony.

Can you talk about your pieces in “Off Canvas?”

The first day was Dashilar rooftop, the white “unruly” and then the big white Shoe. You can actually go on the roof and feel the paint. It’s really nice white paint. When it dries, it becomes almost like a river. You can go … and watch it from the roof.

The second day with the two blacks – black on black [UN–] – that was really nice because it was across the street from a really beautiful restaurant, where they served sea cucumbers … Then back to Dashilar, because there was another wall there. Same place.

Does it make a difference to your work if it’s done illicitly on public property or whether it’s supported by a large multinational, like Converse?

It all depends … I think it’s more about the degree of control that I have and some other company or government has. I can have full control within a commercial project, but usually you have less power, because there’s an art director or somebody who’s telling you, “Can you change this a little bit?” But I think I’ve sort of passed that stage.

I made it my own, so I’m the only one who knows the rules. So that’s important – if you do something that other people can do, then the client or somebody can say, “Well, If you don’t do it, then I’ll go to someone else.” But there isn’t somebody who can do what I do, because I made it mine. I’m the best at what I do because I’m the only one who does it.

Does the architecture of a city or the city planning play a part in how or what you tag?

If you do tagging, you don’t care. You don’t give a shit. It’s illegal. Of course, if you do projects like the three locations [in “Off Canvas”], the architecture is of course really important. You just use whatever the wall does, you use it in the painting. For instance, the one in Wudaoying, it was sort of on the bottom [of the wall]; the bricks were coming through, the paint was falling off, so it made sense to make it into a horizontal thing.

Any chance we’ll see you out tagging in Beijing’s streets?

We did, we did … Don’t tell anyone.

To check out Meulman's pieces as well as the other works in "Off Canvas" for yourself, click here for a map.

Photos: Bas Uterwijk