Graffiti & Street Art in Da Nang, Vietnam

The street art in Da Nang tends to be quite terrible and talentless done by hacks who are simply vandalizing the spaces that they do not have permission to do their trade on. I have written quite a lot about how I really enjoy street art, especially spray paint work. Much of what is done here in Da Nang that is nice looking street art is actually done with brushes, which still looks nice but in my mind it kind of takes the urban look out of it. I think that spray work is much more authentic.

Every now and then some business will hire extremely talented people to decorate their walls and one of the largest pieces of work I have seen anywhere in town was commissioned by the owner of Section 30 Pub and Restaurant.

Maybe it isn't easy to tell from that photo but this piece occupies an entire story of the building next door.

The other two are even larger.

This one, and the other next to it are two stories tall, which would make them roughly 16 meters in height. I saw some of this being done and there was a team of people as well as a mechanical cherry-picker machine involved in the process.

This is the last of the 3 and it was the first one to get put up. All of these except for the last one were completed over the course of several days and it really makes the place stand out among all of the other pubs and restaurants.

I asked the owner how it is that he was able to do this legally because he doesn't even own the building that it is painted on. I was told that he had to give a bit of money to the person on the plot next door but they didn't haggle with him and were kind of excited that he was going to beautify the area. Most of the "street crap" around here tends to look more like this turd

Even though I am not a Vietnamese citizen and even though it is not my property, I would still shout at anyone that I saw doing stuff like this. Not only is it ugly but it is also very mean to the person who does own that space.

Unfortunately for Da Nang, about 95% of all the street "art" here is like the last one, but every now and then someone comes along and pays some real artists to do something amazing. I think his amount of customers increased because of this beautifying of the space. Maybe he will make some money and can repair or replace those absolutely terrible sofas that you can see at the bottom of the first 3 pictures. They are really bad, when you sit on them you just fall through to the ground!