BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
The streets across the US were again flooded with justifiably angry, determined women yesterday. Nothing we can say here will do justice to the enormity of the crowds protesting in 250 cities on the first anniversary of the inauguration, nor the range of political and social fronts that are being contested.
Clearly the world stage has been thrown off kilter by the the erosion of trust and confidence in this government, in the economy, in the fraying social fabric, the attacks on people and the earth. “The decline in confidence in the U.S. president has been severe in some countries since Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017,” says FactCheck.org, and it “is especially pronounced among some of America’s closest allies in Europe and Asia, as well as neighboring Mexico and Canada,” the Pew Global Attitudes Project found. That’s in only one year.
Oh, did we mention that the US has a government shutdown right now?
Today we chose the top image by Alex Senna to symbolize the people who are in the shadows who are hiding and who think we don’t know they are there and that no one is looking out for them. Immigrants across the country are being threatened, yet exploited day after day – afraid to go to the police or even hospitals when abused by employers, by family members, by misguided racists. We see you and we hear you. As a nation descended from immigrants, the indigenous, and the enslaved, we remember our history. Similarly, people who are being sex trafficked, or who are unable to speak up because of financial restraints, religious restraints, psychological restraints. We see you.
Heavy topics, but these are the streets, our streets, all of us. Roberta Smith said this week in The New York Times when reviewing the Outsider Art Fair; “Art Is Everywhere”. We’ll widen that sentiment and say that art is for everyone, and the street is more than ever a perfect place to see it.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Ai WeiWei, Alex Senna, Cholula, Ernest Zacharevic, Fontes World, Mr. June, Retna, Roman, Stray Ones, Terry Urban, and Zola.
Top Image: Alex Senna ( photo © Jaime Rojo)
Ai Weiwei. “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors”. NYC wide multimedia/multi site exhibition for Public Art Fund. Brooklyn, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Street Art Council (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Terry Urban (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Adam Fujita and Fontes World collaboration brings to mind our recent article about artists endless fight for affordable housing in NYC Indeed a Dying Breed. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Stray Ones (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Ernest Zacharevic fills the space with a cube. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified Artist in Cholula, Puebla. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Paris (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Zola (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn vs Everybody (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Retna in Cholula, Puebla. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Román in Cholula, Puebla. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Mr. June for The Buschwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
This public ad campaign against fur borrows from the street art stencil technique. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified Artist in Mexico City. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
