EAST HARLEM MURALS CELEBRATE THE SPIRIT OF PLACE

The Heritage Traveler has decided to take the above advice — at least for the next several posts. Instead of traveling far afield, we are going to highlight a New York City neighborhood that’s about three and a half miles from my apartment. It’s called East Harlem, and we’ll spend the next several days there.

The ethnic make-up of East Harlem has changed many times over the years. Native Americans were displaced by the Dutch and they, in turn, were displaced by the Germans and the Irish. Later, Italian and Jewish immigrants moved in.

Puerto Ricans made the neighborhood their own after World War II, participating in Operation Bootstrap, a US government initiative to supply cheap labor to the manufacturing industry. Now, many Puerto Rican families have moved out to the suburbs, and West Africans, Chinese and Mexicans have moved in.

Class change is also transforming East Harlem, although it has beenslowed by the recent economic downturn. Still, increasingly, the upper middle class has been moving in as the working poor are being forced out.

Local artists are now calling the area between 104th and 107th streets around Lexington Avenue a cultural corridor. Here galleries are emerging, and open mics and classes in music and dance are thriving. Some of the community’s best mural art can also be seen in this area.

Since the late 1980s, artists have been commissioned by families and friends to create murals that commemorate the lives of loved ones, especially those dying violent deaths. In East Harlem, the memorials are usually created by professional and semi-professional Puerto Rican artists. Each wall transforms personal grief into public remembrance.

While some people think of the art as graffiti,  the stylistically authentic and individualistic street art is most often painted by permission on the walls of apartment buildings or playgrounds. It often highlights the lives of prominent Puerto Ricans like Celia Cruz and Pedro Pietri.

Work by Tats Cru — also known as The Mural Kings — has changed the perception of graffiti as art.  More than twenty-five years ago, as teenagers, this group began their careers by creating subway graffiti. Now they are professional muralists in the forefront of mural art. Known for their powerful, expressive style, the Bronx-based group has spearheaded the battle to change people’s perception of graffiti art. Largely because of their efforts, graffiti as an art form has been included in the Smithsonian Institute’s American Folklife Festival. Their work also adorns several New York public schools and hospitals. They have lectured at Hunter College, MIT, the University of Massachusetts, Cortlandt University, and many community based organizations.

Tats Cru is sought after by graffiti writers from all over the world who want to intern with them to improve their own ‘aerosol’ art form.

The murals of East Harlem, along with the many community gardens dotting the streets,  celebrate the Spirit of Place, preserving and promoting Puerto Rican cultural traditions even though the neighborhood is in the throes of change.

To learn more about the neighborhood, its people, and its mural art, take a look at the video below.

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Posted by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe.
Photograph by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe.
Slideshow by Lisa Reynolds Wolfe.