Those longing gazes are from your family, those red-lines are through your neighborhood, those abstractions are your intersections with poverty, wealth, race, beauty, and power.
OverUnder had a “whirlwind 72-hour pandemic tour” that led him through Chicago and Gary, Indiana, and his brilliantly human painted wheatpastes showed up on many a pressed-wood board. The impolite truths of neoliberalism – neglected neighborhoods of our de-industrialized 2020, now licking ever closer to you and yours.
OU brought his kids too, at
least in his paintings. “I also put in one piece that I made with my daughter –
you can see her nice little pink additions.”
“There is also a portrait of a young man named Adonis next to a piece I put up of Mayor Hatcher with some abstract red lines across it (redlining),” he says.
“He was the first Black Mayor of a big US city along with Carl Stokes of Cleveland in 1967.”
Oh yes, those days of promise back then, you think.
I believe that as artists we have a commitment to society,” says PERSAK, “and in these difficult times art helps people a lot to keep busy and to distract themselves from so much bombardment of news about COVID-19.”
His new street mural in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico borrows a culturally significant icon to bring home a message to as many people as he can. “The use of a mask is essential to avoid contagion,” he says.
One of a three-mural program he painted here, he says he chose images of worldwide recognizable icons like Van Gogh and the Mona Lisa as well, but this one is closest to home. For PERSAK (Daniel Martínez Carrillo), the goal was simple; “I just want to raise awareness about the health measures that must be followed at this time,” he says.
What a week – as bad news is replaced by horrible news. But seriously, the summer has been beautiful in the streets of New York in so many ways, and we feel lucky here – even though there appears to be an exodus? Yeah we remember it from the 60s and 70s too but it was called “White Flight” then. Wonder who’s leaving now? Kitchen too hot? Please, gurl, go home. The rest of us will be just fine here because we’ve always loved New York in good times and in bad. These are the Golden Years.
The DNC 2020 infomercial this week looked like the 1996 RNC one but with “diversity” – as we get pulled/pushed further and further toward the right. This weeks’ RNC infomercial broadcast from White House grounds will march us off a cliff, no doubt. Speech writers are searching now to set the reich tone. Austerity for all! War is Peace! Suburban Karens Will Crush You!
Let’s see what the streets are telling us.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring 7 Line Art Studio, Adam Fu, Billy Barnacles, CB23, Cern, Gee Whiskers, One Rad Latina, and Rar Grafix.
In a “now” obsessed culture that is in the convenient habit of forgetting, the marches against police brutality and racism this spring and summer have had an earth-shaking quality mainly because there is little real knowledge about the US past. But take a serious look at the dynamics at play and the ugly behaviors and attitudes on display in 2020 are identical to those of say, a hundred years ago.
Street artist OverUnder paints a correlation in Gary, Indiana this summer between the killing of a black 17-year-old, Eugene Williams, in 1919 and the killing of George Floyd in 2020 – and a host of others during the century in between. It’s a stunning conceptual piece that optimizes the architecture, its planes and location, OverUnder adeptly braids the pain and imagery of that youth in the water, the resolute profile of local rapper Freddie Gibbs, and a YouTube timeline showing minute-years elapsed directly on housing stock that has been abandoned and shifted to the margins of this city. Talking to him about the evolution of the project, the vibrations are compounded by OU’s story that when he first conceived of this silhouetted head on red rippling waters two years ago, he had not yet learned the story of 1919.
With an aspirational attitude of hope for the future, OU calls the new installation “1919 Sunset and 2020 Sunrise”. Likewise we’re looking at today’s strong determined voices as a dawn of our new age of equality and fairness.
Rooted in our history, here is OverUnder’s description of his project in his own words;
“The two pieces are a pairing speaking to now and then. A simultaneous centennial remembering the Red Summer of 1919 where a black 17-year old named Eugene Williams, floating on a homemade raft in Lake Michigan drifted beyond an imaginary racial line leading to a white man throwing rocks at him; ultimately drowning him. The Black side of the beach confronted the man and involved the police but they wouldn’t make an arrest. Instead they arrested a Black man. Fights, shots, riots, and arson exploded across Chicago leading to weeks of violence and thousands of people left homeless. Other riots were also happening across the U.S. better known as the Red Summer.
Meanwhile the Steel yards of Gary were seeing major strikes. After strikebreakers and police clashed with unionists in Gary the U.S. Army took over the city on October 6, 1919, and martial law was declared. Something all too familiar now.
The tension had been building. Prior to this America was deep in WWI. This had a twofold effect on Black Americans. First of all, most Black soldiers serving overseas were rejected by their American superiors and were reassigned to the French army who didn’t have the same racism. After serving alongside fellow allies these Black Americans became accustomed to being treated equal aka normal. However post-war at their homecoming they were given a cruel reminder of the two sides of America.
Aside from having a terrible time readjusting after returning from fighting overseas for America other non-serving Blacks were defending their jobs from those Irish and Italian Americans returning and hoping to get their old jobs back. During the war a labor shortage in Chicago and Gary had a majority of industrial work going to Blacks migrating out of the Jim Crow south for a fraction of the pay. However with returning vets hoping to get their old jobs back racial tension was inevitable. After the drowning of Eugene Williams the multitude of tensions came to a head across Chicago and Gary.
For me I proposed this design when I was invited to paint Gary in 2018 for no direct reason aside from thinking it was pretty for an urban lakeside community. The project fell through and we revisited it unsuccessfully for the fall and then once more the next year. Funds and logistics didn’t line up again and the project was scrapped. As the Black Lives Matter movement began to regain traction following the lynching of George Floyd several histories were being retold. One of which was the Red Summer of 1919, the riots in Chicago, and past civil unrest.
Upon hearing this I first couldn’t believe I had NO clue and the familiarity between the story and my original proposal. The imagery was serendipitously tethered in a centennial relapse. It was just too weird. So I reached out to Lauren at Paint Gary again and was like ‘Yo! we need to make this happen!’ It’s too on the nose. All I need is a wall. I will take care of everything else.” She lined up this particular wall at the Edison tract and I gave myself a proper 48-hour pandemic window to make it happen.
The wall entitled 1919 Sunset shows an anonymous figure in silhouette treading water. The adjacent wall entitled 2020 Sunrise pairs a melancholy portrait of Gary rapper Freddie Gibbs with a YouTube timeline showing a 20:20 second clip paused at 19:19.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. Indecline “The Art of Protest” Trailer
BSA Special Feature: Indecline “The Art of Protest” Trailer
Directed by Colin M. Day (“Saving Banksy”) and produced by INDECLINE, the film is an inspirational call to action, featuring the worlds leading activist artists and musicians, assembled for the first time to discuss what some consider to be the vital importance of resistance art in the era of Donald J. Trump.
With the US election looming large this fall, artists are mobilizing in different ways to help raise awareness about the importance of voting.
One civic-minded group of artists and creatives have launched “Give A Damn. Vote”
Oliver Rios. Sketch. (photo courtesy of the artist)
This is precisely the collaboration of minds that we need to be effective with our goals. Graffiti artist and designer Oliver Rios recently joined the “Give A Damn. Vote” initiative – and he shares with us his new design.
Oliver Rios (photo courtesy of the artist)
“I’m motivated to create the designs I do because the 2020 election is too important to not be involved,” Mr. Rios tells us. “Give A Damn Vote is not the answer to all our worries. But hopefully, it becomes a small part of the many, many efforts that will be necessary for the political outcome we so desperately need. I want I wanted to look at my kid and say ‘I tried’ and failed – versus having tried nothing at all.”
Struggling to focus your eyes on evolving mysteries of the day, you may think that the world is visible at times through mottled glass. You can make out the forms, the gestures, the motions perhaps, but the identity and character are also formed and shaped by a filter, a storied thick glass filter. It’s a biomorphic embossed way to see things, like the office door leading into the darkened lair of a private detective, his cigarette smoke billowing over the brim of his dense gray fedora.
Fintan Magee. Two Figures Behind Glass. Ipswich, Australia. (photo courtesy of the artist)
For Queensland,
Australia’s Fintan Magee, it’s another challenge that he admirably meets artistically,
painting the effect over two essential workers forms in this new mural. “The
Arctic glass pattern in the painting was common in middle-class Queensland
homes in the 1960s and was used in French doors and windows,” he tells us. “Some
of my earliest memories of Queensland architecture was my father’s silhouette
through the glass doors when he got home.”
Evocative of a middle-class life afforded to many rich countries in the decades following the end of World War II, those same associations are now aching reminders of how we’ve been duped – with banks and corporate captains gradually re-writing the laws to silently kill the middle class in stages, while the light keeps changing the forms behind the glass.
Fintan Magee. Two Figures Behind Glass. Ipswich, Australia. (photo courtesy of the artist)
“The work explores the role of de-industrialization in
urban communities and on the suburban fringes of Australia. The figures in the
mural appear distant, disconnected, isolated, and breaking up,” he says. “As
middle-class homes become increasingly out of reach for working-class
Australians and lower-pay and job insecurity continues to shape how we work,
this painting explores how nostalgia shapes political views and how workers
view their communities and the outside world.”
To be absolutely timely, Magee says he is paying a tribute to those who have continued to work essential jobs, sometimes sacrificing, usually worrying, during this time of Covid-19 crisis, and both the forms here are also evoking the distances we feel from one another.
Fintan Magee. Two Figures Behind Glass. Ipswich, Australia. (photo courtesy of the artist)
“The work specifically looks at two rail workers from the city of Ipswich. As Queensland was in lockdown, many people in management or admin roles were able to isolate, while many essential, transport, delivery, and medical staff continued working. Keeping our economy functioning and food supply moving. This painting pays tribute to these essential workers while proposing a reassessment of how they are valued in the post-COVID-19 world.”
Guess it depends on how you see them.
Fintan Magee. Two Figures Behind Glass. Ipswich, Australia. (photo courtesy of the artist)Fintan Magee. Two Figures Behind Glass. Ipswich, Australia. (photo courtesy of the artist)Fintan Magee. Two Figures Behind Glass. Ipswich, Australia. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Here’s something to look forward to! A good solid regional actual mural festival celebrating its fourth edition, and one that we are proud to support. For those not able to travel, BSA will bring you the process, the art and the flavor and color of the locals with Fer Alcala and Mira Hacia Atras gorgeous photos.
Here are JPGs of the press materials from the Parees Oviedo mural intervention festival in Spain. We’ll bring you the murals as they go up next month.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Almost Over Keep Smiling, Billy Barnacles, Gianni Lee, City Kitty, CRKSHNK, Early Riser NYC, Seven Line Arts Studio, M*Code, Ori Carino, Sticker Maul, Turtle Caps, Urban Russian Doll NYC, and You Go Girl!
“Instead of cooperation, we have divisions among countries,” reports Alaniz from here in Stornara, Italy. “There are people that still now think the virus is not real.”
Alaniz & Federica in collaboration with Stra Murals Crew. Stornara, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Alarming and true, anti-intellectualism
has expanded to new heights during this pandemic – likely resulting in people
getting sick and/or dying who didn’t really need to. If it’s any consolation to
you, dear reader, history tells us that there were anti-mask
naysayers during other mass illnesses too – standing firmly in opposition to
public health directives because of feared encroachment on civil liberties, or simply
because Jesus told them. Ah well.
The Argentinian born nomadic painter Alaniz says that his new figurative mural with his “new family” in Stonara is a collaboration with his love Federica – and it took 10 days to complete. It features a beleaguered turning figure wearing a facemask, but its final face is macabre, frightening. The presentation is confused, perhaps because of the sun-drenched and cheerfully eye-popping palette.
Detail from a new mural by Alaniz in collaboration with Stra Murals Crew. Stornara, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Overhead is a dove flying with a hypodermic need in its beak, perhaps the elusive vaccine meant to inoculate people against Covid-19. Or, possibly it is carrying a 5G microchip shot from the Bill Gates foundation that will communicate your thoughts to any nearby Alexa speaker. Hard to tell.
“After 10 days of work we present this wall as a representation of the mixed feelings that this lockdown generated in most of us,” says Alanis. “This has been a unique situation that has affected everybody’s lives and that has shown the failures of our actual society.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. From the Archives: Keith Haring 2. Friday Night, August 14th – From Funkadelic 3. One Thousand Stories / The Making of a Mural / A Project by JR
BSA Special Feature: From the Archives: Keith Haring
Why are we thinking about street artist Keith Haring so often right now? Possibly because we are remembering how he used his art practice to talk about crisis on his doorstep, and took risks to get his work out, and we are seeing more artists stepping up to that challenge on the street today.
When we think about this pandemic and the ways in which the artistic community has swiftly and forcefully responded to illustrate with their art the general mood, the ethos, the official response from our political leaders, the health providers unequivocal rush to action to save lives, the scientific community pushing to guide us during this still ongoing crisis, the dissemination of information and misinformation on social media, and the decisive actions from the mainstream media to educate the public on the pandemic one New York City artist comes to mind.
Keith Haring. He used his art to talk about Apartheid in South Africa, the crack epidemic, and the scourge of AIDS, a disease that took his life in 1990. We wonder what he will be doing on the streets if he were still alive. He’d be 62 now, still an age where he’d have the creative energy imbued with wisdom and experience. Below we share with you a vintage reel of him getting up on the NYC Subway.
As you watch this video for a mass TV audience under the guise of kooky kuriosity, it also crosses your mind that the police handle him with kid gloves – they don’t tackle him and slam him on the ground. Would his fate have been the same if he were black? And the reporter follows him around like a curious puppy, in awe of his escapades, intoning that vandalism is cute when its done by white guys from Pennsylvania who sell canvasses in Soho. There is so much we can learn from archived footage like this.
So you know what tonight is, right?
One Thousand Stories / The Making of a Mural / A Project by JR
Back in June, BSA published the first article on disCONNECT, a project created in London during the lockdown due to Covid-19. A collaboration between Schoeni Projects and HK Walls, disCONNECT involves the take over of a period building by 10 artists from different countries.
Disconnect “reflects on the creative and physical constraints of the current global crisis, exploring psychological and political reactions to the crisis, as well as the role of technology as conduit between the two.”
We’re pleased to bring you our final article on the project with images of the works of all 10 participating artists. For our previous coverage click HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.
Free Tickets for disCONNECT are now available. 24 July – 24 August, Wednesdays – Sundays. Hourly slots starting from 11am to 5pm, with a maximum of 8 people per slot. Please book below, we can’t wait to share this journey with you!
Street art welcomes all manner of materials and methods, typically deployed without permission and without apology. This hand-formed wire piece …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
