Reworking the tourist gaze: urban art,counter-heritage and public encounter in Barcelona

Abstract

Touristification increasingly shapes how cities are represented, experienced and governed, but little attention has been paid to how urban residents actively intervene in these processes through visual culture. This article examines how urban artists in Barcelona use visual and spatial practices to contest the symbolic and political effects of tourism. Drawing on qualitative interviews with urban artists, interviews with members of the public, and visual fieldwork, the analysis focuses on three forms of intervention: historical muralism and place-based memory work, political muralism addressing contemporary issues, and collective artistic practices aimed at reclaiming public space. The findings show how urban art may disrupt dominant tourist imaginaries, reinsert marginalised histories into the urban landscape, and create opportunities for moments of critical engagement among both residents and visitors. At the same time, these practices are shown to operate within the visual economies of tourism where their meanings remain contingent and open to appropriation. Rather than functioning as decorative or incidental elements, these practices may be understood as forms of counter-tourism infrastructure that mediate the tourist gaze, produce and preserve grassroots heritage and expose the contested politics of visibility in the tourist city. In doing so, the article contributes to urban-tourism research by demonstrating how visual culture enables situated and uneven forms of resistance within highly touristified urban environments, while remaining entangled within the dynamics of attention, consumption and circulation that characterise contemporary tourism.