street art stencils show social media culture through graffiti

street art stencils show social media culture through graffiti
all images courtesy of iheartthestreetart

armed with ink and imagination, a vancouver street artist has stenciled a series of street art compositions in and around his urban surroundings. each image shares a relationship to a particular aspect of contemporary culture, specifically social media and its connection to a generation of children.

a child types away on her smartphone, with message bubbles painted above her head

throughout his public works, the artist known as iHeart imagines kids interacting with facebook and twitter, toying with their smartphones, writing in hashtags, whining about instagram notifications and complaining about auto-correct. with a banksy-esque quality — a simple use of color and graphics marked by the interplay between positive and negative space — iHeart tells the story of a social-media-obsessed culture, and the evident effect it will have on the growing youth.

‘download font’ appears as a ‘button’ beneath a graffiti tag

a stenciled child takes a selfie

the young girl scribbles a huge hashtag onto the wall

a mathematical code equates to ‘i<3u’

#graffiti #is #just #meaningless #tags — an interesting play on words

a homage to the facebook wall, written on an actual wall

a pedestrian walks past the message written on the wall