After years of either ignoring or shaking her head at graffiti tags, Madeleine Chapman has fallen in love with the jandal.
The first time I saw it was on Instagram. A friend from Wellington – a cool friend – was visiting Auckland over summer and posting tasteful, uncaptioned photos from their trip. Every image of a popular cafe, new bar and exhibition I recognised. And then there was the jandal. A simple white outline on one of those dark green power boxes. I laughed at what I assumed was a one-off scribble and that was that.
Then another visitor to Auckland posted a different but identical white jandal, this one on the footpath in Ponsonby. Suddenly I was seeing it all over Instagram, and every post was the jandal in a new location. Always white – evidently a partial stencil – always small and always crack up. Having only recently moved away from central Auckland after living there for 14 years, I felt a deep pull to visit the city just to see the jandal.
Graffiti in general has never affected me like this. I am decidedly neutral on the moral argument of graffiti as protest and resistance versus graffiti as (illegal and costly) public nuisance. I enjoy looking at a mural and mostly can’t decipher what any hurriedly applied tag says. And I would never suggest to anyone that it is a good idea to vandalise public or private property.
But I also have eyes that can see and a heart that can feel, so when I see something that ignites a frankly confounding emotional response in me, I have to acknowledge it.
I am obsessed with the jandal. If you had said the words “tag that’s a jandal” to me six months ago, I would have shrugged it off. So what? There’s all sorts of tags out there. But now “jandal tag” makes me smile every time. In 2022 I asked “Are jandals dead?” after noticing a massive drop in usage around New Zealand. I think they did die, but now they are back, at least in art. Your favourite artist’s favourite artist Sione Monū recently produced a series of beautiful bead artworks depicting island legs (you can tell from the calves) wearing socks and jandals. The pieces were titled “Fob Tabies” and sold out immediately.
A white painted jandal shouldn’t be this compelling. And in anyone else’s hands, it wouldn’t be. (Note: I have no idea who is behind the tag, nor do I particularly wish to find out.) There are so many scenarios where a jandal shape spraypainted on the footpath – and it is the footpath ones I’m talking about here, rather than the larger vertical editions – would be ignored at best and irrationally annoy you at worst. But there’s something about this jandal…
Firstly, it’s round. It’s not the actual shape of a jandal, in fact if it were, I’d probably hate it. Instead, it’s the shape of a cartoon jandal. Pepelo Pepelo from bro’Town wears this jandal. Dwayne Johnson in a bad wig doesn’t wear this jandal, but animated Maui does.
The softness of it is playful, childlike, deliberately not of this cruel world. The footpath canvas adds to the sense of childlike play, reminiscent of chalk stick figures and hopscotch squares.
And like hopscotch squares, the jandal invites participation. It’s the perfect size, meaning on first glance it looks like the size of an actual jandal but when you stand next to it (as you inevitably will), it looks comically large. A moment of whimsy in an otherwise ordinary day.
And there’s only ever one. A right jandal, making its way around the city. I have seen one instance of the word “jandal” being tagged alongside the image on a canvas construction tent, but the vast majority of appearances are the lone jandal on the footpath, pointed deliberately. They are little arrows of encouragement, inviting you to keep walking, keep exploring, and are quickly becoming a public art “must-see” and “must-photograph” for tourists visiting the world’s largest Polynesian city.
When I’m next in Auckland I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for a jandal on the ground. And when I see one, I’ll laugh and place my foot on top, to see if it fits.
