All posts tagged: Homesick

BSA Images Of The Week: 03.22.26

BSA Images Of The Week: 03.22.26

Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!

In New York, the New Museum has reopened with its expansion by Rem Koolhaas and Shohei Shigematsu, pulling in steady lines of architecture watchers and contemporary art pilgrims. The opening exhibition, “New Humans: Memories of the Future,” sets out to parse what it means to be human as technology redraws the terms, gathering more than 200 contributors across art, science, and film—an experience that is by turns enthralling, overwhelming, poetic, and brutal.

Now four weeks into the war he started—and with little support from allies and low backing among U.S. voters, President Trump says he’s thinking about “Winding Down”. At the same time, the United States is deploying about 2,500 Marines and additional naval forces to the region and Trump is reportedly gearing up to ask Congress for 200 billion dollars more for the war. Estimated deaths so far: approximately 3,000 people.

In a display of the classic New York tension between preservation and redevelopment, a canonical piece of early street culture history—a 1987 mural by Keith Haring—is at risk. The City says it will preserve it, but many remain unclear how—and are openly skeptical.

At the mural festival called The Crystal Ship 2026 in Ostend, Belgium, a cleverly named exhibition “Subway Art”—curated by Alice Gallery—revisits the origins of graffiti culture, tracing its roots in the subway systems of New York and other early writing scenes. Presented alongside the festival’s citywide program, it anchors the broader theme of Curiosity by grounding it in the movement’s unsanctioned beginnings and writer-driven history.

Coming up in April, “Martha Cooper: A Retrospective” opens at the Bronx Documentary Center Annex in the Bronx, New York, offering a comprehensive survey of her five-decade career documenting urban life and creative expression. On view from April 9 through June 14, 2026, the exhibition brings together decades of work that helped define the visual record of graffiti and street culture.

César Chávez, long honored as a leader of the farmworker movement, has also been the subject of grave allegations reported in recent accounts, including statements by Dolores Huerta, who said publicly that he raped her twice in the 1960s and that she bore two children as a result. In recognition of the labor, sacrifice, and leadership of women in the movement, we call for Huerta’s name to replace his on parades, holidays, streets, schools, libraries, parks, post offices, vessels, monuments, murals, and other public institutions or commemorations that now bear his name.

¡Viva Dolores Huerta!

Here is our weekly photographic interview with the street, this time featuring: Carlos Alberto, City Kitty, Hanimal, Homesick, IMK, Le Crue, Mickalene Thomas, Queen Andrea, and Vesod.

MIckalene Thomas (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Carlos Alberto (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Camaleon remixes Charlie Chaplin from the 1940 movie “The Great Dictator”. In it he plays the dictator Hynkel, who literally tosses and caresses the world like a balloon, a visual satire of totalitarian ambition and ego. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Hanimal. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Hanimal. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Hanimal (photo © Jaime Rojo)
LeCrue (photo © Jaime Rojo)
HOMESICK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
City Kitty (photo © Jaime Rojo)
QUEEN ANDREA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
VESOD (photo © Jaime Rojo)
CURE (photo © Jaime Rojo)
IMK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
NEAT (photo © Jaime Rojo)
KING65 (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Untitled. Manhattan, NYC. March 2026. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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BSA Images Of The Week: 03.01.26

BSA Images Of The Week: 03.01.26

The Blizzard of ’26, which New York endured this week, is already a fading memory. We have fresh chaotic news every day, keeping everyone off-kilter, with purpose – some would say.

Snowmanhenge has melted, French street artist JR plans to transform Pont Neuf bridge this summer in Paris, and in Texas they’re erasing queer and black folks from the streets. Here in the city we’re going to keep an eye out for street art and graffiti that addresses the man who said, “As president, my highest aspiration is to bring peace and stability to the world.“, and who unleashed more fresh violent war yesterday that destabilizes the entire Middle East and who knows where else. God help us.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Sluto Mosaic, BNE, Cazu Zui, Homesick, Mok, Notice, Rambo, Shock, and Werds.

Vintage ROA. Blizzard of 02-26 (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Vintage Ben Aine. Blizzard of 02-26 (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo) Is the apologist seeking redemption from a spurned lover? Is it a collective apology for the evil deeds coming from the current tenant in the White House? Why are they sorry, we wonder?
HOMESICK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
HOMESICK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
CAZUL ZUI (photo © Jaime Rojo)
SHOCK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
A memorial to Joe Strummer with a relevant message for today’s world. “You have the right to free speech, as long as you’re not dumb enough to actually try it”. Song/video below. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
NOTICE (photo © Jaime Rojo)
WERDS. AIDS MOK, (photo © Jaime Rojo)
RAMBO (photo © Jaime Rojo)
BNE (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sluto Mosaic (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Tags (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Untitled. Winter 2026. Brooklyn, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

_____________________________

Know Your Rights – The Clash (with a repeating visual by Futura)

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BSA Images Of The Week: 02.15.26

BSA Images Of The Week: 02.15.26

Our hearts are full of love this Valentine’s weekend for you, dear reader.

A new study shows New York’s artist population is declining for the first time in decades due largely to housing costs, and most people here will agree with that conclusion. Brooklyn-based Street Artist Marka27 (Victor Quiñonez) found that censorship is strong on campus when his exhibition addressing immigration enforcement was cancelled at the University of North Texas, yet another example of universities not standing up for free speech but suppressing it. Meanwhile, Street artist Ernest Zacharevic has filed a lawsuit against AirAsia for unauthorized use of his famous Penang mural imagery, highlighting ongoing battles over ownership and reproduction of street art. In graffiti news, Street Art NYC has a brief interview with curator Christine DeFazio on her Tales from the Ghost Yard show in the Bronx. In Paris A Valentine’s Day exhibition yesterday brought together street and contemporary artists Clément Herrmann, Mr Byste, FinDAC, Uri Martinez, Belin, and Sandra Chevrier in a live, public-facing showcase.

The Federal government continues its campaign to remove people’s histories from public space, most visibly this week with the removal of the Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument — the symbolic birthplace of the modern LGBTQ rights movement — before local officials and activists raised it again in defiance. New York Governor Kathy Hochul criticized the removal, calling it “hurtful”, noting that the LGBTQ community has been “discriminated against and oppressed for much of its history,” adding, “The Pride Flag has meant a lot to all of us here in New York and to those who come around the world to see this place.”

New York’s Public Art Fund is featuring a number of artists in 2026 whose paths have crossed with street art, including Barbara Kruger, whose early wheatpaste posters and later bus-shelter text works established a new language of the street; Nina Chanel Abney, whose large-scale murals and façade projects have extended the public wall tradition with socio-political critique; and Jane Dickson, whose decades of street-level and transit-based projects in Times Square and the subway system connect directly to New York’s urban visual culture. It’s encouraging to see institutions recognize artists whose methods have long existed outside the mainstream—even if that recognition often arrives only after the market has validated the work.

If you want to get out of your apartment and out of the cold and into a museum in New York right now you can check out “Colorful Korea: The Lea R. Sneider Collection” at The Met, “The Brooklyn Bridge Up Close” at The Met, “Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture” at The Frick Collection, “Wifredo Lam: When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream” at MoMA, and the Claes Oldenburg retrospective at the Whitney.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Appleton Pictures, Atomik, BK Foxx, Chuck U, Dee Dee, EASC, Homesick, IMK, NESC, and Siner One.

IMK. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
IMK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
BK FOXX with East Village Walls celebrate The Year of The Horse. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dee Dee (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Eternal Possessions (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Chuck U (photo © Jaime Rojo)
NESC (photo © Jaime Rojo)
EASC (photo © Jaime Rojo)
ATOMIK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Permanent Vacation (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Appleton Pictures (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Appleton Pictures (photo © Jaime Rojo)
SINER ONE (photo © Jaime Rojo)
_ _ SA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
HOMESICK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
An unidentified artist is telling us that THE BIG GAME is coming to the USA…although foreigners are increasingly worried about visiting this year because of ICE actions against people living here. The number of foreign tourists who came to the United States fell by 5.4% during 2025 (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Untitled. Winter 2026. Brooklyn, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)


Duendita – Mind

Queens, New York-based Duendita often moves between NYC and Berlin contexts. “Mind” reads more as an intimate, interior/performance piece rather than a particular place.

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BSA Images Of The Week: 02.08.26

BSA Images Of The Week: 02.08.26

Welcome to BSA’s Images of the Week! It’s Superbowl day! Bad Bunny at half-time!

This week in NYC art news, vandalism of a politically charged mural is causing “debate“, an exhibition at the Noguchi Museum reimagines the city through unrealized designs, and the School of Visual Arts saw their chair of MFA Art Practice program resign after it was revealed that he featured several times in the latest release of the Epstein files. According to ArtReview, “Ross was formerly director of the Boston ICA, the Whitney and SFMoMA, and had been chair of the MFA Art Practice program at the SVA since 2009”.

The Year of the Horse is going to be celebrated in the city soon with Lunar New Year performances and public celebrations animating a lot of neighborhoods, Black History Month programming brings talks and performances across the city, and museums and cultural institutions participate in protest actions tied to ICE raids across the country.

Also, Tony from down the block is trying to figure out how to get a dozen roses for your sister Chambray before Valentine’s Day without blowing his entire paycheck from the funeral home, and the pressure is on for couples to make some cinematic gesture this week. But honestly, an afternoon wandering a museum together, followed by a pizza slice and a soda under fluorescent lights, still does the job better than any prix-fixe romance package ever could. These are not times to break the bank. Don’t stress; as a certain Chicago street artist used to say, “Don’t Fret.”

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring ANSO, Ben Keller, CP Won, Frank Ape, Hoax, Homesick, Jose Scott13, Loose, Salami Doffy, Tyxna, Vnice World, Noeli, and Xara Thustra.

Ben Keller. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Ben Keller (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Ben Keller (photo © Jaime Rojo)
CP Won for East Village Walls. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
HOMESICK / Xara Thustra (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Jose Scott13 / Vnice World/ art by Noeli (photo © Jaime Rojo)
SICKID(photo © Jaime Rojo)
“Happy Birthday Paul Cezanne”, undoubtedly painted on or near January 19th, to celebrate the French Post-Impressionist painter whose explorations of form, color, and perspective helped bridge 19th-century Impressionism and the development of modern art movements such as Cubism. Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
“An artist’s job is to change a person who is closed… immovable…and help them open up and live in flux. If we want to be good artists, we also have to be open and willing to be vulnerable.” ~ Shawn Regruto. HOAX (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Jade (photo © Jaime Rojo)
LOOSE ANSO. “Kick out the Jams” (video at end) (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified artist quoting Silvio Rodriguez. Lines from Me acosa el carapálida threads across an NYC subway map, tracing how systems of power pursue and shape everyday movement through the city. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Uniditenfied artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
DUMBO (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Frank Ape (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Salami Doggy (photo © Jaime Rojo)
(photo © Jaime Rojo)

Murals like this new one in Manhattan, and an earlier example in Bushwick, have been appearing in cities including Washington, Miami, Los Angeles, and Chicago, depicting Iryna Zarutska, a victim of violence in Charlotte last summer. The campaign positions her death as a reductionist symbol within a broader, loosely defined narrative that unrestrained “street” crime has overtaken American cities. Her image — carefully selected and conventionally appealing to a certain segment — functions as a cherry-picked face for that message, which some critics view as echoing earlier eras of racially coded fear-based rhetoric that is on display again. Members of Chicago’s Ukrainian community have also pushed back, describing the murals as a cynical tactic and noting, according to local reporting, that the victim’s family was not consulted. The Guardian says the funders have ties to the MAGA movement and billionaire Elon Musk, and it asks, “Are they weaponizing her memory?” The accused attacker’s mom told the local newspaper that her son suffered from severe mental health problems. Whatever the case is, some on the street have decided the whole thing is sus, as the gamer kids say, and have been vandalizing the murals.

Untitled. Lower East Side, NYC. Winter 2026. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

MC5 – Kick Out The Jams

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BSA Images Of The Week: 01.25.26

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.25.26

Welcome to BSA’s Images of the Week!

The New York Post is complaining that the new mayor is using 2,200 digital street kiosks to promote himself, rapper NAS mentions a generation of graffiti writers in his new song called simply Writers-“The Mic is a Marker I’m tagging more names”, the Metropolitan Opera has two murals by Chagall for sale, Trump was forced to back off his ideas about stealing Greenland in Davos, Canada’s PM gave a history-changing speech saying that US relations with the rest of the world have been ‘ruptured’ permanently, people in many cities, particularly in Minnesota, are going on strike and taking to the streets to demand ICE stop its attacks on people and its probable violations of human rights, and speaking of ice, more than half the US threatened with ice, snow and cold in massive winter storm.

The State of New York is under a State of Emergency due to the storm, which made it a good decision to get out earlier this week to document new street art and graffiti. This is typically a slower period for artists and writers, but in this city, the street is never static. There’s always an ongoing visual discussion unfolding in public, often reflecting the moment back at us.

As the weather intensifies, attention turns to those most affected—especially people without shelter and neighbors who may need help. If you can, check in on people nearby and offer what you’re able: a blanket, food, or a small bit of assistance can make a real difference.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Acet, Dah Face, DASH, DELUDE, DIKS, DINK, FLASH, Hal Merick, Homesick, Kane, Mike, No Normal, Os Gemeos, Quaker Pirate, Trisan Eaton, Uwont, and Xara Thustra.

Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Os Gemeos (photo © Jaime Rojo)
UWONT(photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Quaker Pirate (photo © Jaime Rojo)
DASH (photo © Jaime Rojo)
FLASH DINK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
ACET UWONT (photo © Jaime Rojo)
KANE (photo © Jaime Rojo)
No Normal 519 (photo © Jaime Rojo)
No Normal 519 (photo © Jaime Rojo)
No Normal 519 (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Hal Merick (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Tristan Eaton (photo © Jaime Rojo)
DIKS (photo © Jaime Rojo)
MIKE (photo © Jaime Rojo)
MDR SRAT ROEK TAKE (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Dah Face (photo © Jaime Rojo)
HOMESICK DELUDE (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentifed artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

It looks like Xara Thustra is the artist behind the “STOP MEN” installation (sometimes interpreted as part of a larger, ongoing tag) on the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge. The letters are painted on a high, visible spot on the bridge structure, reportedly over several nights.


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BSA Images Of The Week: 01.18.26

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.18.26

Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!

Snowy. Hard to see through right now. The physical temperature here in NYC is low, but the rhetorical temperatures are spiking across the land. The battle for freedom is in the courts and Congress and in the streets again, with the demonized and disenfranchised reeling back on their heels. When pressure like this builds, it surfaces everywhere at once—across institutions and culture, on ballots, in courtrooms, and eventually on the street—because culture absorbs, and sometimes rejects, what power attempts to normalize.

Humans never tire of this story—our story—the one where autocrats punch down, reign briefly, and are eventually upended by resistance. Otherwise, why does it recur across centuries, across societies and school districts and states and strata and Shakespeare? Silly and careless as we are, immigrants and the descendants of immigrants let our guard down again, and those who mistake domination for virtue rise again, attempting to strip us all of liberty, to fracture us, to manufacture narratives of the “other.”

One thing people don’t tire of is what keeps reappearing on walls and signs in cities nationwide: reminders of our ideals of welcoming the stranger, embracing difference, and becoming stronger because of it. Walls—often instruments of exclusion—remain contested surfaces for street artists and rebels, carrying rebuttal, invoking memory, and thrashing out dissent in public view. Immigrants are the heart of New York, our DNA melded through toil, competition, and chutzpah. We know tyrants, many of us, as did our parents and grandparents—having escaped them, named them, and fought back against them.

Lo, beware of those who forget where we came from: everywhere.

Here is our visual interview with the streets, this week featuring ACE, Caryn Cast, CRKSHNK, DELUDE, Dieka, Garrett Wasserman, Homesick, Jibz, Jim Power, Mosaic Man, Naiver, Qzar, Rae, Salami Doggy, and Wellnoo.

DIEKA. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

From “The New Colossus” (1883), by Emma Lazarus:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

DIEKA (photo © Jaime Rojo)
CRKSHNK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Salami Doggy (photo © Jaime Rojo)
RAE. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
QZAR. RAE. LOVE. DZEL. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
ACE (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Caryn Cast. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Caryn Cast. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Caryn Cast (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Garrett Wasserman (photo © Jaime Rojo)
HOMESICK. DELUDE. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Jim Power aka Mosaic Man. City Lore. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
JIBZ (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Welinoo (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Fundraising for an engagement ring under frigid temps in NYC. The weather registered 32 Farenheit but felt like 22 on Friday. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: What are you doing?

DUDE: It’s performance art.

BSA: Are you fundraising?

DUDE: Yeah, for a ring for my girlfriend.

BSA: (We couldn’t hear his answer clearly) Why does your girlfriend need money?

DUDE: Sorry?

BSA: Your girlfriend needs money?

DUDE: No, it’s just to buy an engagement ring for her.

BSA: OK. How much money are you planning to raise?

DUDE: Whatever I raise with the project goes towards the ring.

BSA: Do you want a diamond?

DUDE: Yeah.

BSA: A lab one, or a real one?

DUDE: A real one.

BSA: OK. Good luck.

DUDE: (Shivering)Thank you very much, have a good day.

Update: A commenter on the BSA Insta post wrote that he’s been fundraising for this project for over six months.

Fundraising for an engagement ring under frigid temps in NYC. The weather registered 32 Farenheight but felt like 22 on Friday. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
NAIER (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Chair with snow falling on a terrace. Brooklyn, NYC. January 17, 2026. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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BSA Images Of The Week: 11.16.25

BSA Images Of The Week: 11.16.25

Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. Photographer Jaime Rojo hit the ground running upon getting back to dirty old Brooklyn this week from a Berlin/Prague tour. Lots to report from there on the walls, in the gallery, and in the museum spaces – and more to come for you to enjoy. In the meantime, here’s what he found on the streets of NYC; a mash-up of handstyles, graphics, pop cues, fine-art chops, humor, sarcasm, reverence, and straight-up rebellion — cultures colliding and talking back.

We begin the show with a new portrait of the much-loved graffiti and street art photographer Martha Cooper, based on a photo by Corey Nickols and painted by Swed Oner (Mathieu Taupenas) in Bushwick with Joe Ficalora and the Bushwick Collective by his side. Born in the south of France in the 80s, a graffiti writer in the late 90s, Swed Oner is now known for his hyper-realistic, monochrome portraits of people transformed into religious icons – featuring a “halo” motif for framing.

Featuring Dzel, EAZV, EXR, Gloom, Homesick, IMK, ISB, Jodi Da Real, KAMZ, Mike King, Notice, RIP Money, Shwan McArt, Silent, Smaer, Two Five, VENG, Warios, Werds, and ZOZS.

SWED ONER. Portrait of Martha Cooper. Detail. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
SWED ONER. Portrait of Martha Cooper. Detail. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Two Five. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Two Five. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Two Five. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
GLOOM (photo © Jaime Rojo)
NOTICE (photo © Jaime Rojo)
DZEL. EXR (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Shawn McArt (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Rip Money (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Jodi Da Real (photo © Jaime Rojo)
ZOZS (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Mike King. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Mike King (photo © Jaime Rojo)
HOMESICK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
WARIOS (photo © Jaime Rojo)
IMK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
DZEL. SILENT. WERDS. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
SMAER (photo © Jaime Rojo)
VENG. EAZV. ISB. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
KAMZ. NYC KUSK CO. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Border with Germany and the Czech Republic. Vltava River. Fall 2025. (photo © Jaime Rojo)


Swed Oner for Bushwick Collective, 2025. Martha Cooper. Swed_Oner on Instagram

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BSA Images Of The Week: 09.28.25

BSA Images Of The Week: 09.28.25

Welcome the BSA Images of the Weeeeeeeek!

First, some housekeeping: over the past few weeks, you’ve probably noticed we’ve been publishing less—and the site’s been buggier than Mayor Adam’s re-election campaign, the MTA’s subway announcement system, or a 2025 White House policy rollout. You’re right. BSA is in the middle of major technical upgrades, and it’s been a lift. Thanks for your patience. We’re entering our 18th year—more than 7,000 articles, 60,000 images, thousands of artists across six continents—and we’re focused on making our next chapter faster, cleaner, and steadier.

Keeping street art’s genesis years in view as we look at today’s evolving scene, the New York Times arts section declares the ’80s are back!—although a mostly privileged, mostly white version of the ’80s. “Downtown/Uptown: New York in the Eighties,” staged in a Beaux-Arts townhouse at 19 East 64th Street, packages art-school cool, downtown interdisciplinarity, and a confident graffiti-adjacent chic for polite Upper East Side viewing. It wasn’t thoroughly subversive at that time; the scene was perpetually status-signaling, and getting your name on the list at the door was paramount. Yet that mid/late-Boomer, budding cappuccino crowd could still be transgressive and forward-leaning, incorporating new tech and future-minded theory. The labels arrived in a rush: Neo-Expressionism, Appropriation, Neo-Pop/Commodity art, Simulationism (Neo-Geo), photo-conceptual work, street-adjacent practice, and graffiti, – or would that be neo-graffiti?

Someone once said of the ’60s, ‘If you remember them, you weren’t there’—and everyone laughed. Bowie said he barely remembered recording Station to Station in the 70s, and a similar collective bemusement winked at the excesses of that time as well. So as we wind up the wooden banister on the Upper East side we wonder how many memories of the cocaine-ecstasy-fueled Downtown 80s club scenes still remain. With a lot of elbow room, you are welcome to gaze upon these paintings, sculpture, photos, and works on paper by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ross Bleckner, Francesco Clemente, Eric Fischl, Guerrilla Girls, Peter Halley, Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cady Noland, Ricky Powell, Richard Prince, David Salle, Kenny Scharf, Julian Schnabel, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, Haim Steinbach, Tseng Kwong Chi, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, and Christopher Wool. Also, another question, if we may: Where were Uptown and Downtown specifically located at this time?

This new show shares a zip code with a collector base, a certain moneyed nostalgia, but little DNA with the scrappy, cross-pollinated Times Square Show of 1980, which actually mixed uptown and downtown with gusto, drawing from born-and-bred New Yorkers and informed by the street. A few artists, such as Haring and Basquiat, were also featured in that show, but the selected significance of the decade is presented with a different focus here. Fittingly, the paper of record just ran a valentine for the new show titled “New York’s Art Stars of the ’80s, Curated by One of Their Own.”

Ever clubby, and somehow, always away with friends this weekend.

As a related corollary, it was a pleasure to hear this week a panel led by one of the original ‘Downtown’ art critics, Carlo McCormick, in what was once SoHo—the late-’80s/’90s crucible where clubs bled into galleries, DIY shows met the street, and performance tangled with protest. Sorry, it is still Soho. At Great Jones Distilling Co., a short walk from the old Tower Records, and smack in the middle of a ghostly cloud of SAMO poetic missives, McCormick underlined that “street art” is a broad field with many lineages and methods, usually without permission or gallery contacts. His guests traced that arc: Ron English, an early subvertising billboard hijacker; Lady Aiko, a later-generation artist working stencils and character-driven iconography; and DAZE, an original NYC train writer from the late ’70s/early ’80s who carried yard energy into studios and the city. The talk acknowledged a period of collaboration and volatility—experimentation, AIDs related grief, fear and rage, thumping hedonism, hip-hop and punk, a rebirthed bohemia—and a city that has drifted steadily over decades toward finance-first priorities, even as artists kept testing the edges of public space and fought to stay here.

Here is our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring A Presidential Parody, Adam Dare, Bunny M., Captain Eyeliner, DZEL, EXR, Fer Suniga, HekTad, HOMESICK, MACK, Mario P, MR KING15, NO MORE WARS, RATCHI, SPAR, VES & Friends, and ZWONE.

NO MORE WARS. Unidentified artist. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
GAZA. Unidentified artist. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified artist in the style of Hiero Veiga. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified artist in the style of Hiero Veiga. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Bunny M. Detail. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Bunny M (photo © Jaime Rojo)
RATCHI (photo © Jaime Rojo)
HekTad. Adam Dare. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Captain Eyeliner (photo © Jaime Rojo)
EXR. ZWONE. DZEL. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
VES & Friends. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
A Presidential Parody (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Fer Suniga (photo © Jaime Rojo)
HOMESICK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Mario P. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
MR KING157. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
MR KING157 (photo © Jaime Rojo)
SPAR (photo © Jaime Rojo)
MACKS (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Untitled. Morning Glory. Summer 2025. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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BSA Images Of The Week: 08.31.25

BSA Images Of The Week: 08.31.25

Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! This is the last weekend of the summer for some, a celebration of workers’ rights for others. Labor Day’s parade began in 1882 in Union Square, New York City. Now, unions are under attack, as they have been for a long time. However, without your labor, this city would not exist as it does today.

Labor Day in New York is more than just a long weekend — it’s a reminder of the people whose work has shaped the city and inspired workers’ movements worldwide. From builders and transit crews to teachers, caregivers, and service staff who keep daily life moving, New Yorkers have always been at the forefront of fighting for dignity and fairness on the job, often at great personal sacrifice. Like the uncommissioned art and permissioned art that fills our streets, some labor is public, visible, and often underappreciated — yet it leaves an unmistakable mark on the life of the city. We honor that history and salute the many workers across the five boroughs who carry it forward every day, with grit, pride, and a determination that makes New York what it is.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring works from Bird Milk, Crash, Duke A. Barnstable, Homesick, Molly Crabapple, PAGED, SAMO@, SAMOI, TFP Crew, and Wild West.

Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
SAMO© (photo © Jaime Rojo)
CRASH. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
CRASH (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Bird Milk (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Molly Crabapple. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Molly Crabapple. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Molly Crabapple. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
TFP CREW. GERMANY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Duke A. Barn Stable (photo © Jaime Rojo)
HOMESICK. WILD WEST. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
PAGED (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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BSA Images Of The Week: 08.17.25

BSA Images Of The Week: 08.17.25

Welcome the BSA Images of the Week! Recent exhibitions, festivals, mural programs, and artist movements demonstrate that street art’s vitality continues to evolve—shifting from unsanctioned and underground to mainstream and institutional, and then back to the public streets. Far from fading, the street art and graffiti movement continues to adapt and engage more people, sparking dialogue about art, culture, creativity, property, politics, and its role in urban life. Our inbox at ABC runs like the city itself: fast, loud, nonstop—thankfully, this deli coffee is strong.

Global Graffiti Festival: The Meeting of Styles international graffiti festival just took over Rruga B Street in Kosovo’s capital, marking its 9th edition in Pristina. The city’s embrace of this festival – and the participation of artists from as far afield as Europe, the Americas, and Asia – underscores how the street art movement continues to span the globe, including places that rarely feature in mainstream art news.

As we speed through block parties, outdoor concerts, graffiti jams, and the end of New York’s summer art scene, we note next month’s arrival of the Gaza Biennale, a roving exhibition spotlighting artists from the embattled Gaza Strip. Previously exhibited in London, Berlin, and Athens, the show is a powerful cultural statement, taking place at 19 venues across 12 cities worldwide. The biennale’s New York iteration will span five days (September 10-14) at the non-profit art space Recess in Brooklyn.

Theatergoers have been flocking to Central Park’s Delacorte Theater for Twelfth Night, starring Peter Dinklage and Sandra Oh – in this New York tradition that’s open to everyone. Fans are lining up hours—even overnight—for free tickets, turning the event into a communal spectacle of Shakespeare for our treacherous time, of this moment.

“If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.” (Twelfth Night, Act III, Scene IV)

Check out DJ Lilly Bombas this week (8/19) in Times Square at Broadway & 46th St. Here’s a link to a recent set of her blending hypnotic tribal drums, Latin percussion, and deep tech house at the Lot Radio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring works from Acet, AIC Mosaic, Below Key, Benny CRuz, Hektad, Homesick, JerkFace, Marly McFly, Obey, Paul Richard, Qzar, Sasha Gordon, Shepard Fairey, Tom Bob NYC, and Werds.

Tom Bob NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Benny Cruz (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Jerkface. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Jerkface. Wu-Tang is for the children. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Danny Cole (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Marly McFly (photo © Jaime Rojo)
HEKTAD. A many-splendored thing. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Sasha Gordon (photo © Jaime Rojo)
AIC Mosaic. Hot time in the summer. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Paul Richard (photo © Jaime Rojo)
OBEY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
WU-TANG (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
QZAR is on fire. HOMESICK. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
WERDS. ACET. AIDS. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Below Key and friends. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Untitled. Summer 2025. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

New York’s Alright if You Like Saxaphones – Fear

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BSA Images Of The Week: 08.03.25

BSA Images Of The Week: 08.03.25

Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! It’s the Wild West out here, and there, there, there, and there. Is this deliberate? Does it all have to go up in a fireball, people? Honestly.

In a published worldwide letter 1000 rabbis say the Gazans are starving, Mayor Adams is accused of falsifying petition signatures, Trump fires BLS commissioner after a weak jobs report, there are still plenty of free fun things to do in New York this summer, and your aunt Linda just tried to pay for weed gummies with a Bed Bath & Beyond coupon. Embrace the madness—and enjoy this surreally entertaining collection of new street art and graffiti: suitably perplexing, fantastically eclectic, and always right at home in this city..

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Ben Keller, BIR, Buff Monster, Caleb Neelon, Caryn Cast, Fernando “SKI” Romero, Homesick, Joe Iurato, Kam. S. Art., Katie Yamasaki, Loky Oner, Marco Checcheto, NAST 404, Paul Richard, Porkshop, RUDE, Sky Adler, Wild West, and Yo Skills.

Sky Adler (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Buff Monster (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Buff Monster (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Kam S Art for Welling Walls. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Ben Keller for Welling Walls. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Ben Keller for Welling Walls. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
RUDE (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Marco Checchetto for Welling Walls. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
BIR (photo © Jaime Rojo)
HOMESICK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
WILD WEST (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Caryn Cast for Welling Walls. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
NAST 404. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
NAST 404 photo © Jaime Rojo)
Loky Oner. Yo Skills for Welling Walls. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Katie Yamasaki and Caleb Neelon for Welling Walls. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Joe Iurato(photo © Jaime Rojo)
Fernando SKI Romero for Welling Walls. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Paul Richard (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Paul Richard (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Porkchop (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Untitled. Bodega Cat. Brooklyn, NY. August 03, 2025. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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BSA Images Of The Week: 07.27.25

BSA Images Of The Week: 07.27.25

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Welcome to BSA Images of the Week.

This week’s collection leans toward graffiti—city writers rekindling a romance with old styles, tracing our urban aesthetic lineage with fresh hands, new eyes, and scribes. Beyond that, the crime stats continue their long downward drift, despite some corporate outlets insisting our city is in daily chaos, as if Bedlam had moved in. Immigrants are valued members of New York’s sense of community and multi-culture, as ever, but a strangely well-funded machine would have you think differently- if they could. NYC is far more youthful, open-hearted, and innovative than that kind of thinking can imagine.

National heaviness seeps into the local air: relentless headlines, instability abroad, inhumanity and warmaking, higher costs, service cuts to some of the most in need, attacks on institutions—and on your search for sanity. You can feel it rumbling like the subway underneath: a slow, grinding disquiet, the weight of evident inequalities, the steady drip of absurdity and distraction.

Maybe that’s why the streets speak in heightened tones: sometimes glorious, other times surreal, opaque, saccharine, macabre. Rage simmers alongside wistful nostalgia. Escapism too. As old certainties dissolve, strange new forms begin to emerge. The atmosphere feels charged—thick with tension, possibility, change.

Everyone agrees New York is hot this summer—oppressively so—until, suddenly, there’s a breeze, a clear sky, and you exhale. Let’s go for a walk. How much of what is seen is real? How much is perception? How much is projection? Hard to say. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s all part of the picture.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week including Couch, D30, Dopamine, Homesick, Jappy Agoncillo, Kam S. Art, KEG, Nekst (tribute), RatchiNYC, Sefu, SMLZ, Sower Kerd, Wild West, and Zoot.

D30. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
D30. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
D30. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
D30. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
D30. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
ZOOT (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Kam.S.Art (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Jappy Agoncillo (photo © Jaime Rojo)
SEFU (photo © Jaime Rojo)
RATCHI (photo © Jaime Rojo)
SMYLZ (photo © Jaime Rojo)
COUCH (photo © Jaime Rojo)
DOPAMINE (photo © Jaime Rojo)
HOMESICK (photo © Jaime Rojo)
HOMESICK. WILD WEST. KEG. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
SOWER KERD (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Untitled. Summer 2025. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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