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Graffiti Emmaviaduct

Mick la Rock (Aileen Middel), Quik (Lin Felton)

About this artwork.

Under the Emmaviaduct, along a main route between the Central Station and the Groninger Archieven, there is a mural by Quik (Lin Felton) and Mick la Rock (Aileen Middel).

The story behind this starts in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, where the street art and graffiti movement grew strongly during that period. The rise of subcultures among young people such as punk and hip hop proved to be fertile ground for growth. From the 1980s onwards, more and more graffiti also appeared in the Netherlands.

From New York to Groningen
In 1992, Frans Haks, then director of the Groninger Museum, decided to bring street art and graffiti into the museum with the exhibition Coming from the Subway: New York Graffiti Art. With this, the museum played a pioneering role by being one of the first worldwide to recognise street art and graffiti as art. The opening of the exhibition will include a mural under the Emmaviaduct, a work that artists Quik (Lin Felton) and Mick la Rock (Aileen Middel) worked on together.

Quik and Mick
Quik (1958) has had a major influence on the graffiti scene in the city, and his work is still cherished. Mick la Rock (1970), born and raised in Groningen but now living in Amsterdam, became acquainted with New York graffiti artists through the attention for graffiti in the Groninger Museum. She is one of the first and most famous female graffiti artists in Europe.

Emmaviaduct
In September 2024, Quik and Mick la Rock returned to Groningen to create a new mural under the Emmaviaduct in honour of Groningen's rich graffiti history. For this reason, the artists opted for a classic graffiti style, which originated in New York in the 1970s: Style Writing. In this style, the letter styles that represent the artists' names are placed as beautifully and uniquely as possible. In the case of the mural under the Emmaviaduct, the whole is also surrounded by colorful paintings of stars and animated character Felix the Cat sitting in a spaceship. In realizing the work, Quik and Mick were assisted by Phillip Ekwaro-Osire, a Fine Art student at Academie Minerva.

New Collaboration
The work under the Emmaviaduct not only marks a historic moment, but also the start of a new collaboration between Stichting Kladmuur and the Groninger Archieven. Stichting Kladmuur is committed to collecting and archiving Groningen subcultures that flourished in the 1970s and 1980s, including graffiti. The archive, which includes photos, stories and newspaper clippings, was transferred to the Groninger Archieven in October 2024, the Month of History. The artwork under the Emmaviaduct, which is located next to the Groninger Archieven, is therefore a symbolic start of various activities that Stichting Kladmuur will organize together with the Groninger Archieven.

Also read: Graffiti legends Quik and Mick La Rock, back in their beloved Groningen, for large mural under Emmaviaduct

Location.

Emmaviaduct (onder viaduct, ter hoogte van de Groninger Archieven)

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Facts & Figures.