The Life-Changing Art of Subversive Skateboard Graphics
For designer Fatimah Kabba, deck stickers were a portal to a vibrant world.
A s a restless pre-teen in suburban Boston, I was lulled to sleep by neon colors and rowdy typography. It was the late ’90s and early ’00s, and I had covered my bedroom ceiling in vinyl skateboard stickers that I got for free by replying to ads in Thrasher, TransWorld SKATEboarding, and Concrete Wave.
For me, board and sticker graphics were like a visual manifestation of individuality. As a first-generation American, I felt caught between white suburbia and foreign culture in confounding ways. I remember feeling the gaze of pre-conceived notions, the assumptions of my interests and character, and in an instant wanting to both embrace and rebel against the model minority myth. As I struggled to reconcile the layers of my identity, I wanted nothing more but to absorb and live in singularity and not feel representative of all of my visible identities. I didn’t exactly find the skate community diverse or easy to infiltrate, but I did find a home in the periphery of the skate community, in the art that its culture generated.
Sticker graphics introduced me to the vibrant art of Kevin Ancell, the bold typefaces of Roger Excoffon, and the funky illustrations of Jim Phillips and Mark Gonzales. And they opened my mind to social issues as I noticed the work of political artists gracing boards as well. The first time I ever saw an “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” sticker was on the bottom of a deck and I thought, “Who is that?” Then I thought, “Who made that?” From there I found Shepard Fairey, then the Guerrilla Girls and Ai Weiwei. Eventually I fell into the likes of Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Gran Fury, Larry Clark, Herb Block, and Keith Haring. The list was endless. These artists disrupted my perspective and introduced me to a whole new world, one where people challenged authority without permission, and successfully impacted conversations on a societal level. I was hooked.
Skateboard graphics were the first thing that made me believe that all you really need to begin to subvert the status quo is an idea and the desire to do so. They fostered within me a quiet distaste for bureaucracy and pushed me to help create better systems, ultimately leading me to focus on a career trajectory tackling complexity through design. The language of design challenged my ideologies, expanded my worldview, and gave me the ability to find commonality and acceptance in the most unlikely places, including my own identity.
Pitches, story ideas, and feedback welcome: submissions@magenta.as
