BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. Don’t miss the Brooklyn Botanical Garden right now – it is peak Cherry blossoms and lilacs – with groups of New Yorkers and tourists walking amongst them. Luis Mangione plead innocent Friday in Federal Court in New York, while Republican U.S. Rep. George Santos got 87 months in prison, and after 10 years in storage, an iconic Banksy artwork on a Brooklyn wall is on view again in NYC.
You can trace the national/international headlines like veins across the map—the courts, the economy, the ports, the rising trade in arms internationally, the hollowing shelves, the smiling wolf-like threats to Medicaid that serves seniors and the poor and disabled, the silent waves of layoffs, the escalating prices and shrinking dollar, the protests, the bristling anger expressed at podiums and on TV screens toward citizens and people just trying to make a living. To people on the street these can feel like signs of a careful dismantling of a century of progress and rumblings of worse to come. The writing is on the wall, and a quiet unease drifts through the days.
Also on the wall today, our top image: a mural in Little Italy, New York, of Pope Francis, whose funeral was yesterday in Rome. A champion of the forgotten, a diplomat of peace, a voice for those left in the margins. More than 400,000 mourners filled the streets — world leaders and ordinary souls alike. Honoring his commitment to marginalized communities, approximately 40 individuals—including transgender people, prisoners, migrants, the homeless, and victims of human trafficking—were invited to be the final group to pay their respects before his burial at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re called him “a pope among the people,” remembered not for the weight of his office, but for the lightness of his compassion.
With these news cycles to contemplate, many may be asking if we will rise to meet the moment. Certainly it looks like street artists continue to enter the fray of politics, human rights, technology, pop art, the environment… You never know what you will find in these confused days.
So here’s some of this week’s visual conversation from the street, including works from Banksy, Homesick, Jorit, Great Boxers, Ottograph, Skitl, Delphinoto, Oink Oink, and Cure.
BANKSY created Battle to Survive a Broken Heart during his New York City residency, Better Out Than In, in October 2013, unveiling a new piece each day for the entire month that had fans and collectors racing to new locations around the city to see his newest installation. He painted this stencil in Red Hook, Brooklyn, on the wall of a warehouse owned by Vassilios Georgiadis. After it was promptly vandalized, Banksy returned to restore it. The piece is now on display in the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place in Manhattan, ahead of its auction by Guernsey’s on May 21.
