One of the most incredible aspects of street art is that it can take many forms and mean many things — from a small sticker pasted onto a trash can to graffiti found in a subway car to paste-ups adorning a fence. Being from Mexico, I have always felt strongly connected to murals and their powerful messages. Murals are big. Murals are vibrant. Murals are captivating. In this third installment, I am excited to share my journey of leaving New York City to start the second half of my off-campus year studying in Italy, and to share my experience with Jorit, an internationally known Italian urban artist.

In my first Weaving the Streets installment, I described how my interest in street art was born as a child in Mexico, and I focused on the artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya and her installation “We are More” in New York City. I am very excited about this second article because I was lucky enough to interview a street artist myself and learn about street art in NYC and the community of street artists first-hand. For this article, I will be featuring Savior El Mundo, a street artist, but also a dancer, curator, and more, who shared with me his own journey as an artist born and raised in New York City.

“Phingbodhipakkiya’s art encourages you to stop and reflect. The public nature of her eye-catching work encouraged me, and likely thousands of others walking down the crowded NYC streets, to consider individual and collective attitudes towards specific societal groups. It calls out double standards when it comes to appropriating a culture instead of appreciating it.”

How do racial capitalism, the politics of corporate branding, and the “shock doctrine” converge in the ongoing gentrification of Sunset Park, Brooklyn? Iman Maani explores this question in her first installment for “Glocal Dispatches,” our series focusing on how globalization impacts local communities.