Lee Street Art

An anthropologist professor herself, Doreen Lee, in her research paper, “Anybody Can Do It: Aesthetic Empowerment, Urban Citizenship, and the Naturalization of Indonesian Graffiti and Street Art”, exposes the supremacy of street art and graffiti to the political movement in Indonesia. Lee’s purpose is to depict the recent spread and creation of the street art through media during the post-New Order Indonesia. She has established a very professional tone in order to appeal and provoke the thoughts of her arguments with her fellow scholars in the same field, particularly. Lee begins building her credibility with personal anecdotes and reputable sources, citing convincing facts and statistics; however, her lack of emotional appeal on most part of her essay inevitably weakens her credibility and ultimately, her argument. Lee begins her paper by first laying out the background information about the involvement of youth in the street art movement. Later on she continues by discussing the cultural urban interventions and the communication within the society through public spaces. These factors …show more content…
This assumption might come from her lack of observation and her urge to maintain her credibility as an anthropologist. In addition, her remarks could be possibly misinterpreted as a statement to justify the ravaging of public spaces caused by non-benefiting graffiti. This flaw of oversimplification weakens Lee’s essay in general. While she successfully points out the usage of public spaces to relate with the political agenda in Indonesia, that “street artist sees an underutilized and empty wall under the sign of neglect” (Lee 319), she still has lacks the evidence to show that all the street artists competing for the public spaces share the same goal to publicly show their