To use a mangled metaphor, it looks like street artist Specter has thrown his terry cloth headband into the basketball ring in the ongoing Atlantic Yards dispute between pro-development and anti-gentrification forces in downtown Brooklyn.
For those of you who have been living under an IKEA, gentrification has been plowing through New York City since at least the 1950’s and it went on steroids in the 1990’s as developers began mowing down anything in their path by brandishing a legal claim of “Eminent Domain”.
Don’t take my word for it, even conservative stalwart George Will wrote about it’s perceived mis-use a few weeks ago in the Washington Post.
For my money, and I’m broke, social critique doesn’t get richer than this, and this series will get tongues wagging if these posters stay up for any period of time before being bulldozed. Start the clock!
Included in the Atlantic Yards plans are new condos and a giant shiny new stadium for the basketball team The New Jersey Nets (huh?). That is helpful to know when looking at these hand made posters that have appeared in the affected neighborhood; the gentrifying forces of the moneyed class are depicted as parodies of movie genres; a Kung-fu movie, a horror movie, and a high-stakes pimps-n-hos movie.
The genres are employed effectively, and point clearly to topics not usually so blatantly discussed when talking about gentrification – I’m thinking specifically of the one called “Caucasian Invasion”. That one might get some of our more socio-politically astute neighbors in a frothy choked-up indignation.
As you can see across the bottom of the pieces, the hand painted posters are also for an art show at the MoCADA gallery in two weeks. But these are more than merely advertisements.
The one styled as a high-end gourmet grocery store poster also hits home – I need to get one of those locally-grown pineapples! Maybe Dean & Deluca?
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
You are not alone. It's a simple phrase that offers a lot of comfort in difficult times. For one long, horrible year we’ve been bound to each other by one single catastrophic event: Covid-19. The ...
In advance of Moniker in Brooklyn this May, we are interviewing some of the artists who are influenced both by street practice and fine art as the contemporary urban art category continues to ...
A beautiful week weather-wise in New York - a brisk and sunny week that was great for discovering your city without sweating like a hog. Before we all get clobbered by the holidays and start pilin...
There's street cred, and then there's social media credit. These are 15 of the latter, compiled by BSA by our own rigorous methodology. Bears lead the pack! A monkey is here as well. Skulls and Biggie...
Today is #indigenouspeoplesday - but of course we talk about them more often than this. The Native American people of the Southwestern United States are called the Navajo, or the Diné. Italian spiri...