Arts & Entertainment

Spanish artist Suso33 paints New York melting pot in a Village mural

New York, Dec 22 (EFE).- Spanish street artist Suso 33 has painted a mural on a corner in New York’s Village reflecting the “melting pot” of cultures and identities in the Big Apple, he told EFE on Wednesday.

The iconic Madrid-based graffiti artist worked for three days on the project, using a dozen spray cans, and the different colors of paint and the human-like figures in the mural almost seem to be piled up on a black background.

“New York is a unique place, for what it represents for our culture. It’s the origin of graffiti, and here you can see people from all cultures and of all colors. Some see in this work the flags of their countries, others see something else … In any case, New York is like a big international culture tree,” the artist said.

Suso33 had come to New York for a short time in 2019 to curate the “Art is not a crime” exposition, a tribute to photographer and anthropologist Henry Chalfant, whose work dignified street art and is considered to be a reference point within the world of graffiti and hip-hop.

In that show, Suso33 got to know numerous contemporary graffiti artists, who on Tuesday came by to greet him, just as Chalfant did, and thus pay their special homage and respect to this latest work by the Spanish painter located between 1st Avenue and 7th Street.

On this occasion, and with the help of the Spanish Consulate, which selected an “available” wall in the Bohemian section known as Greenwich Village and acquired all the proper permits, Suso 33 traveled from Madrid to undertake his first mural in the city which practically gave birth to graffiti and street art.

Suso33 says that the mural, because it is “living art,” could suffer damage or attacks – or even be plastered over with posters for this or that event – at any time, but his aim is to spend two weeks in the city and visit his work periodically to see how it evolves and, at the same time, experience it himself and observe what kind of interactions the public has with it, whether they be local residents in the neighborhood or just passersby.

The artist said that there is an interesting debate about the durability of the work and its “ownership,” since – although the owner of the building owns the wall on which it appears – there is greater and greater recognition that such a work, quite beyond legal or monetary considerations, belongs to the artist who created it.

EFE fjo/rrt/bp

Related Articles

Back to top button