Slapped, Tagged, and Shared
Alex (Oleksandr) Sein
How Sticker Art Build Emotional Infrastructure and Community across Urban Spaces and Social Media
This research investigates how sticker art operates as a form of emotional infrastructure within contemporary urban and digital environments. While scholarly literature has explored murals and graffiti as contributors to public discourse and place-making, minimal attention has been directed toward sticker art as an independent clutural practice. This Major Research Project addresses that gap by examining how stickers modify the physical landscape of the city and simultaneously circulate through digital networks to generate community connection and belonging. Using autoethnographic narrative inquiry, the study draws on my lived participation in Toronto’s sticker scene under the persona “BeardedProf416” to analyze the affective, spatial, and relational dynamics of sticker culture. Field observations in public space and online interactions on social media platforms constitute the primary data sources, enabling analysis across physical and digital “third spaces.” Findings suggest that stickers transform otherwise unremarkable physical infrastructure, such as poles, electrical boxes, transit shelters, construction signage, into sites of shared authorship, recognition, and discovery. When photographed, tagged, and reposted online, these physical traces extend into networked publics, reinforcing identity, legitimacy, and emotional attachment across dispersed communities. The study demonstrates that sticker art contributes to urban meaning-making through repetition, presence, persistence, and participation rather than formal sanction or institutional validation. This work reframes sticker art as a visual and emotional connector that links strangers, nurtures belonging, and sustains a creative community across both physical streetscapes and digital media ecosystems. It ultimately contends that small, unsanctioned acts of public creativity play a vital role in shaping the emotional fabric of urban life.


