This is part 2 of a series of new works from the 10th Annual Street Art Fest Grenoble, with photographs by veteran photographer Martha Cooper. The massive variety, quantity, and quality of works at Grenoble place it ahead of many festivals, as you can see here. Many of the murals are in context with their surroundings and collaborate with them in a meaningful way. For its 2024 edition, the Street Art Fest Grenoble-Alpes celebrates its 10th anniversary under the direction of Jérôme Catz and The Spacejunk Art Center. Today we focus strictly on the big statements, and there are many.
Tomorrow the US marks the Thanksgiving holiday, our great non-religious gathering of families and friends that most people enjoy precisely because of its non-sectarian foundation. We break bread together and celebrate in a spirit of gratitude our brotherhood, sisterhood, goodwill, and the harvest.
For us at BSA, we’ll probably be thinking about this new
wall in Pennsylvania that openly celebrates the many nationalities who live
together here in relative harmony day after day, somehow building a sense of
community despite our cultural differences.
Says the mural organizer Iryna Kanishcheva, “We managed to
bring together a wonderful group of neighborhood residents, portraying a huge
hug made up of all their ethnicities and ages.”
Initially drawn to the Rust Belt for jobs in industry and to escape famine,
war, and economic disaster, the immigrants who first established the
neighborhoods in this town of Erie were German, Polish and Irish. Later, some
Greek and Russian. Today the new residents have been arriving from Bhutan,
Syria, Iraq, the Congo, Somalia, Bosnia, Ukraine, Eritrea, and Liberia. Each
immigrant story is uniquely theirs, and each uniquely American as it weaves
with the stories of neighbors.
The question you may ask is “How do you say ‘Thanksgiving’ in all these new
dialects in this town; The most common now are Nepali, Arabic, Swahili, French,
Somali, Bosnian, Ukrainian, Russian, Tigrinya, and French- along with the
existing vestiges of German and Polish
from earlier waves of immigrants.
Spanish Street Artist Manolo Mesa took his new photographic mural project
quite seriously under the guidance of the folks at The Sisters of St. Joseph
Neighborhood Network and asked for the most inclusive group of locals to
gather to represent the current character of the city.”We gathered a group of
neighbors, he took some pictures, and within a few days, the mural emerged.”
“Each of these people feel proud of where they come from, live together and belong to their neighborhood,” the artist says on his Instagram page. “This Mural would not have been possible without you. A big hug.”
Artist: Manolo Mesa @manolo_mesaMural title: About the Community Curator: Iryna Kanishcheva Photographs: Iryna Kanishcheva Commissioned by SSJ Neighborhood Network
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
