Enhanced digital edition

– available also in Italian –

1088press enhanced editions are freely accessible digital formats designed to provide an online browsing experience within each volume.
Explore the digital chapters of the volume from the INDEX menu and and discover many new photos, videos with interviews with artists and the production of their graffiti, pop-ups to glossary entries and with notes to the text, as well as many related links.

Graffiti is a global art movement that is ceaselessly changing and developing. Landing in China only in the mid-1990s, it represents an almost unknown but extremely lively and vibrant phenomenon, capable of giving soul and voice to the anonymous neighbourhoods of China’s megalopolis. Presenting the intense activity of some of the most famous writers and crews in China, this volume shows a form of art in constant evolution, yet still entirely unexplored. Chinese Graffiti lies between legality and illegality, free street art and commercial art, state support and social denunciation, revealing its all-Chinese uniqueness, along with the multifaceted artistic and cultural reality of contemporary China.

Adriana Iezzi is Professor of Chinese Language and Culture at the Department of Interpretation and Translation (DIT) of the University of Bologna. Since 2020 she is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant project “WRITE – New Forms of Calligraphy in China: A Contemporary Culture Mirror” (GA n° 949645).

Marta R. Bisceglia is sinologist, interpreter and translator. Italian, Chinese and Spanish teacher, and PhD student at the Department of Interpretation and Translation (DIT) of the University of Bologna. She has long been involved in the study of graffiti in Asia and joined the WRITE project in 2021.

Martina Merenda is sinologist, translator and professional dubber. Her research activity focuses on the Chengdu graffiti scene. She has been a PhD student at the Department of Interpretation and Translation (DIT) of the University of Bologna and a member of the WRITE project since 2021.