Triadic Structures in Political Street Art: Insights from Vilnius, Lithuania, at the Dusk of the Cold War

Abstract Political street art is a critical medium through which protestors attempt to mobilize others to their causes. Scholars have argued that they often do so through iconographic, textual, and compositional choices that situate a movement’s adherents and opponents in dyadic, morally charged conflicts. By shifting focus from representations of dyadic to triadic relations, I introduce a distinct set of strategies through which the makers of political street art frame conflicts to align the goals of their social movements with the interests of spectators. I argue that character triads, or representations of three actors in a single work of art, are useful cultural tools for implicating bystanders in bilateral conflicts because of two tropes with broad resonance – those of the “common enemy ” and “mutual friend.” Based on a qualitative analysis of triadic networks observed in political street art in newly independent Lithuania, I demonstrate how protestors used these triadic tropes to communicate the global significance of a Soviet crackdown on Vilnius. By embedding third-party spectators directly into narratives of conflict between a “hero” (pro-sovereignty Lithuanians) and “villain” (Soviets, under Gorbachev’s command), they constructed relational motives for these bystanders to build, break, or solidify alliances with Lithuania and the USSR; expanded the scope and scale of their political struggle; amplified the moral imperative of Lithuania’s success; and rendered victory by the underdog a realistic outcome.