Author: María José Carvjal

A post covered in street art, showcasing Chicago’s diverse and creative artistic expressions.

This podcast explores Chicago’s street art as a reflection of social issues, creativity, and collective voices. It highlights its accessibility, democratic nature, and temporary existence, inviting listeners to see the city’s walls as open-air museums where urgent messages and cultural expressions intersect.

 

Audio:

 

Transcript:

Welcome to ELI’s Finding Chicago Global Perspective podcast series for the AEPP 2025. I’m your host, María José Carvajal, and I’m currently a student of the AEPP Summer Program. Today, I want to talk about street art.
And I want to start this podcast by telling you why I chose this topic. I studied contemporary art, and what really amazed me was the idea that art can actually contribute to social activism. Of course, there are many artistic practices that spark critical thinking about social issues. But for me, street art became something I found truly fascinating. Once I started paying attention to it, first in my own city and then in other cities I visited, I realized how powerful it is.
I began to notice that street art is always a reflection of the social issues happening in that place, as well as a reflection of people’s daily lives and their sense of aesthetics. For example, in Mexico, you see a lot of posters and murals from the feminist movement demanding respect for women’s lives. And that is extremely powerful, because in Mexico, it’s a country where so many women are being killed simply for being women.
Here in Chicago, the street art looks different. You see posters, stickers, and murals connected to movements like:
– Black Lives Matter,
– the war in Gaza,
– LGBTQ plus rights,
– the fight to stop gun violence,
– or struggles around immigration.
For me, paying attention to these images is important because they reflect what a society is fighting for and what it truly needs. Mexico and Chicago don’t have the same street art because they don’t share the exact same problems. Every city has its own struggles, and those struggles show up in the street art. That’s what makes it so unique and so meaningful to me.
By watching street art of Chicago, I realized that there is so much more to know about a city than we usually think. There are people living here who want to express how they feel and what they believe. Street art is not only political, but also a way of showing their creativity that is directly born in the streets of Chicago.
As I was walking down the street, I started wondering what it really takes to make this kind of art and what the process looks like. And then I thought about something even more interesting. How street art is accessible to everyone. You don’t need to buy a ticket, you don’t need to step into a museum or a gallery. It’s right there, in public space, for anyone who passes by. In that sense, I think it’s one of the most democratic forms of art.
Democratic because literally anyone can make it. You don’t need permission, you don’t need someone to tell you if it’s good or bad. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to follow rules or perspective or proportion. Street art just needs to say something urgent: a message, a protest, a thought. And that freedom is what makes it powerful.
Another thing I find fascinating is its temporary nature. A mural might last for years, but think about a sticker, a poster, or a graffiti. They could disappear tomorrow. The rain might wash it away, someone might paint over it, or another artist might cover it with a new layer. But that doesn’t make it weaker. It actually makes it more powerful. Because it captures a moment. It speaks for what matters in that exact time and place.
And if you look closely, you can see that many times one sticker is placed over another.Or a poster overlaps with a previous one. At first, it might look messy. But if you think about it, it actually might look messy, but if you think about it, it. actually tells another story. Social movements are often layered and interconnected together. The fight for women’s rights, racial justice, climate change, migration, LGBTQ plus rights, they overlap in real time, just like they overlap on the walls. And that layering becomes a new form of storytelling.
Street art also breaks away from the clean, orderly aesthetic of the museum. It’s not about white walls, perfect lining, and silence. Instead, it’s chaotic, colorful, sometimes hard to read, but that’s exactly what makes it alive. It belongs to the street and to the people who walk by every day.
So when I pay attention to the walls of Chicago, I just don’t see graffiti, stickers, or posters. I see a kind of visual conversation happening in public space. And I think that’s what makes street art so unique. It’s democratic, it’s temporary, it’s imperfect, and yet it’s deeply powerful.
So that’s the end of this podcast. Thanks a lot for listening. I just want to invite you that next time you’re walking around Chicago to slow down and really look at the street art. Take a second like you would in a museum or a gallery and see what it’s trying to say to you. Because who knows?, maybe it connects with you in a way you didn’t expect it. And you can get to know a city much, much much better if you really take a second to look at this street art and try to connect with them and see what the artists are trying to say to you.
Thanks a lot for listening. I hope you really like this podcast and that you really enjoy the city of Chicago. And yeah, see you next time.