Urban Art in Lisbon: Emerging Opportunities and Career Aspirations

Abstract

This article focuses on contemporary urban art in the city of Lisbon. We understand urban art as an art world that has developed through a historical process that, in Portugal, is essentially three decades old. It began with the emergence of the subculture of graffiti in Portugal and it culminates in the gradual artification, commodification and institutionalization of graffiti and street art. We believe this was caused by a particular historical arrangement during the previous decade that produced extremely favourable conditions for the emergence of a set of artists in this field. This arrangement is characterized internationally by the expansion and recognition of street art and, on a national level (especially in Lisbon), by the actions of a number of agents (media, municipalities, art world, commercial entities, academia) that contributed to a higher visibility and legitimacy of this artistic community. Thus, we argue that a structure of opportunities was created that a allowed a number of actors to establish and define a strategy of professionalization in this field. In this article we analyse three types of opportunities: practice opportunities, symbolic, and financial. We consider the social actors that generate these opportunities as well as the way in which artists perceive them and adapt.