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# When Street Art Goes Meta
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/when-street-art-goes-meta/
- Published: 2013-07-24T21:14:56.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:45:14.000Z
- Description: This image, depicting the work of British street artist DS, was briefly on the front page of Reddit earlier this afternoon, and it's tremendous.
- Author: Mostafa Heddaya
- Tags: Opinion, Street Art, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:59 (2012, 2013, part 2)

![wHLwsbM](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/07/whlwsbm.jpg)

Graffiti artist DS incorporated a man covering up his graffiti into a follow-up work (image via Reddit)

This image, depicting the work of British street artist [DS](http://www.dsart.co.uk/profile/?ref=hyperallergic.com), was briefly on the front page of Reddit earlier this afternoon, and it’s tremendous. It’s a brilliant piece, holding to account street art’s dialogue with state enforcement mechanisms while humanizing the faceless apparatus tasked with [buffing](http://www.graffiti.org/faq/graffiti.glossary.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) graffiti. The artist may not be present, but he is watching.

DS, an East London native, is certainly not the first to have used street art to metatextual ends: [Street Ghosts](http://streetghosts.net/?ref=hyperallergic.com) bring Google Street View views onto the very walls they recorded, while Mobstr, another British artist, has [strategically used](http://www.flickr.com/photos/nolionsinengland/9256586374/in/photostream/?ref=hyperallergic.com) anti-graffiti buffing to build his own visual landscapes.

*h/t* [*Reddit*](http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1iyj45/graffiti%5Fartist%5Fds%5Fmocking%5Fhis%5Fstencil%5Fremover/?ref=hyperallergic.com)