SaveArtSpace is proud to present our 10th Anniversary celebration The People’s Art, a public art billboard & gallery exhibition in New York, NY, opening May 30, 2025, curated by Anne-Laure Lemaitre, RJ Rushmore, Zahra Sherzad, Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo, & Travis Rix.

Selected billboard artists are Walter Cruz & Lamar Robillard, Tod Seelie, Anastasios Poneros, Jonathan Yubi, Itzel Basualdo, Matthew Morrocco, Kipkemoi, Tariq AlObaid, Wen Liu, and Gordon Hull.

Selected gallery artists are Adewale Agunbiade-Maye, Alexander Deschamps, Amanda Kleinhans, Anastasios Poneros, Anne Kristoff, Antonio Pulgarin, Arnest Makhin, Azikiwe Aboagye, Carolina Jimenez, Christina Barrera, Dana Robinson, Francesca Magnani, Gordon Hull, Henry Morales, Hwichan Ko, Itzel Basualdo, Jacqueline Yvonne Tull, Javaid Nayyar, Jeanne Verdoux, Jesse Egner, John Kitses, Jonathan Yubi, Josh Fogel, Kathy Shorr, Kyra Clemons, Lauren Roeder, LiLi Jackson, Mary Rozzi, Matthew Morrocco, Samantha Sutcliffe, Stevia Roxanne, Tara Fay Coleman, Tariq AlObaid, Tod Seelie, Tony Quera, Vanessa Feder, Walter Cruz & Lamar Robillard.

Performance artist Autumn Breon will use her body to interrogate the insidious nature of censorship, highlighting cases that were reported by individuals in 2025. As these censorship incidents appear across the LED screens of a mobile billboard with animation by Brindha Kumar, Breon will pull the truck as she walks down a two-lane street in the Lower East Side.

The People’s Art is an art of, and for, the people. This is the art of the commons, that shared space between the tyranny of privatization and the compromise of collectivity. In a medium dedicated to telling the people what they want, SaveArtSpace allows us to occupy public space as a personal place where we can imagine what we need.

Opening May 30, 2025, SaveArtSpace will launch public art installations for each selected artwork on billboard ad spaces in New York City. The public art will be on view for at least one month. Selected artists will also be exhibited at Satellite Gallery, 279 Broome St, NYC, with a one-night opening reception anniversary party on May 30, 2025, 6-9p.

The People’s Art is an art of, and for, the people. In a town like New York City, we’ve got plenty of established spaces - galleries, museums, lobbies and the like - to showcase the art that exists as trophies and baubles in the marketplace of luxury products, or to serve the glut of cultural production like sewer drains in a deluge. This is a project, in however many billboards it takes to get a gesture out there that can dance in the public imagination without becoming a brand, that is all about the space between polemics and poetics, how we communicate in this crowded place without screaming, like the way we somehow know how to walk the busiest of sidewalks without running into one another. It’s a folkloric choreography of lover’s leaps and slapstick pratfalls, talking out loud because you think your phone gives you permission to occupy the bandwidth of everyone around you, or because you’re just fucking crazy. It’s a way of looking as well as representing, the terms of engagement where we try not to stare but aren’t afraid to wink.

Signs of the times, the veritable zits of our zeitgeist, we’ve demeaned and damned billboards at least since Lady Bird talked her hubby President Lyndon Johnson into enacting the Highway Beautification Act (HBA) back in 1965 - the idea being that beauty would make America a better place to live. No doubt the time is nigh for some new assault on this ongoing ugliness (the equivalent of late night TV ads on the cultural landscape), maybe we can call it MABA, but until then let us celebrate billboards as the old-fashioned eye-sores they truly are - neglected vestiges from an early outbreak of a visual rash - the residual old scar tissue of corporate co-option and commercial coercion that has since all but subsumed the society of the spectacle.

An art of the people needs to speak a lingua franca and there can be no more common language than the come-on. We don’t shoot the shit in Latin or iambic pentameter; we communicate in the vulgar vernacular of persuasion. Wherever the artist’s billboards of SaveArtSpace appear like deranged interventions in the quotidian, they do not so much bust out of the normalcy as weave their idiosyncrasies into it, joining the din of optical overload like an odd harmony in an ancient Greek chorus, queries and quandaries in the surface of surety, alternatives to the obvious not afraid of eschewing subtlety for the sake of commanding attention. This is the art of the commons, that shared space between the tyranny of privatization and the compromise of collectivity. In a medium dedicated to telling the people what they want, SaveArtSpace allows us to occupy public space as a personal place where we can imagine what we need. - Carlo McCormick

Selected Billboard Artists

Location: Jerome Ave & Macombs Rd, Bronx, NY

Walter Cruz is a NY-born and Bronx native creative who explores intersections of art and design through his Dominican-American lens. His work aims to understand how Black and brown people inhabit space. He has exhibited at venues including the Bronx Museum, The Museum of the City of New York and completed residencies at organizations like The Laundromat Project. Cruz serves as the visual designer for the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), bringing an artistic eye to social justice issues. He co-founded Zeal, a cooperative uplifting Black multidisciplinary artists. Cruz holds a BA in architecture from Hobart and William Smith Colleges as well as an MFA in interdisciplinary art from Maryland Institute College of Art. His goal is to create work that encourages Black and brown communities to embrace the built environment and explore their shared histories.

Artist Statement:

History is a gateway to collective understanding and a reminder that we are never alone—we are held by the voices and visions of those who came before us. My work creates accessible markers in time that reflect how today’s struggles echo the past, while offering new ways to understand the human condition.

I explore themes of human rights, the built environment, and cultural rituals through a lens shaped by my identity as a second-generation Black Dominican New Yorker from the South Bronx. I’m inspired by how cultures co-create meaning, and I strive to make work that resonates across generations and educational backgrounds.

My practice is political by nature—rooted in living, clarity, and the belief that understanding where we come from helps us imagine where we’re going.

I'm from Uptown and The Bronx and excited to have a piece of my neighborhood and histories on a billboard in NYC! WOW!!

Connect with Walter at @2oceans.

Location: Morgan Ave & Harrison Pl, Brooklyn, NY

Tod Seelie is a photographer and photojournalist whose work often focuses on the fringe: artists and musicians, subcultures, and a strikingly different view of America. By turns somber and playful, striking, and densely layered with connections, Seelie shoots with a keen attention to light and a wry, sometimes melancholic visual language all his own. At times, Seelie has documented communities and projects that he’s also a part of, as with his astonishing photos of the Swimming Cities junk raft armada, pioneered by the artist Swoon. Seelie has photographed in 25 countries on five different continents and is currently loosely based in Los Angeles.

Connect with Tod at @todseelie.

Location: Grand Ave & 79th St, Queens, NY

Anastasios Poneros (he/him) is a painter, sculptor, and street artist. As a first generation American, he is largely inspired by the iconography of his Greek heritage. His parents, in the wake of a war, fled to the U.S. where they overcame all obstacles and settled in New York City. In his formative years, he was heavily influenced by an upbringing immersed in graffiti culture. Over time his street art evolved into large site-specific words written in cursive. The text is elegant and interconnected, a symbol of refinement and a wink at cultural assimilation, yet gritty and raw in its application. In his studio work, he mythologizes tales of tragedy and triumph, as much of his work contains elements of his own playfully apocalyptic ethos. Over the years his medium has evolved to include light sculptures and more recently large scale paintings. Poneros received a BA in design from Pratt Institute. He currently works out of his studios in New York City and Athens, Greece.

Connect with Anastasios at @porknewyork.

Location: 3rd Ave & 11th St, Brooklyn, NY

Jonathan Yubi (b. 1993, Bronx, New York) is a first-generation Ecuadorian-American painter from Bergenfield, New Jersey. His work explores labor, identity, and social unrest through parable-like narratives. His paintings center on construction workers—both documented and undocumented—interweaving them into historical landscapes and contemporary events. He highlights the continuity of labor struggles as a defining element of Pan-American history.

Yubi earned his BFA from Lehman College, CUNY, and previously studied at Memphis College of Art and the University of Central Florida. From 2016 to 2017, he produced Artborne Magazine, a monthly arts publication in Central Florida. His work has been exhibited at the Montclair Art Museum, Anna Zorina Gallery, 17 Frost Gallery, and CityArts Factory, among others. He has a solo exhibition with MiA Gallery in Philadelphia and will participate in the upcoming Space and Time Residency at Guttenberg Arts.

Artist statement: 

Our national mythology—our shared stories—binds us as a people. But where do these narratives intersect with personal histories? How does collective memory reconcile itself with individual truth? As a painter inspired by the structure of literature, Jonathan Yubi weaves characters into compositions of parables and historical landscapes. He focuses on laborers—documented and undocumented—who represent themes of identity, labor, and social unrest. The tools of their trade, symbols of modernity, are both replaced and fortified by pikes, halberds, and long axes. Yubi’s current series, Work i(s/n) Progress, echoes broader labor history as a crucial thread in Pan-American narratives. 

Connect with Jonathan at @jonathanyubi.

Location: Atlantic Ave & Utica Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Itzel Basualdo is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist originally from Miami, Florida. Through photography, video, text, installation, sound, drawing, and sculpture, she works with personal and found materials to destabilize systems of race, gender, and class. She is often responding to her sense of place and belonging as a Mexican-Argentinian-American, and language is an important part of her narrative—not just in communication, but in translation and a broader understanding of the American sociocultural landscape. Through the context of existing cultural, historical, and political structures, her responses mediate between the self, other, place, and question the frameworks in which they exist. 

She holds a BFA with honors from Florida International University and an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, NSU Art Museum, LOOP Barcelona, among others. She is a recipient of a Redbull Arts Microgrant, the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship Award, the New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship, and she has participated in the Artpace San Antonio and Smack Mellon residency programs. A former member of NEW INC, she was also one of the co-founders of the speculative, borderless production lab R.I.C.O.R.O.B.O. She has published a few poems and short stories, and has held roles as an educator and public programs manager—focusing on youth and families—at both the Queens Museum and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.

Connect with Itzel at @lalicenciadaitzelbasualdo.

Location: Morgan Ave & Stagg St, Brooklyn, NY

Matthew Morrocco received an MFA from Columbia University. Recent exhibitions include Orchid: RGB, at Fotografiska, NY, and his book, Complicit, was published in September 2018 with Matte Editions. His work has received grant support from New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, a blade of grass, Columbia University and New York University. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vogue Italia, W Magazine, Dazed, Cultured, and Hyperallergic and is in the collections of the RISD Museum and Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Andover, among others. 

Connect with Matthew at @matthew_morrocco.

Location: Park Ave & Carlton Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Kipkemoi was born and raised in northern Germany to a Kenyan mother and German father. In 2011, after graduating from the University of Hamburg, he relocated to Oakland, CA where he found a new home. Despite having no prior involvement in the arts, Kip was drawn to and inspired by the vibrant and unapologetic black artist community of the Bay Area. Out of that inspiration grew a curiosity to create art himself. In 2012 he decided to pick up a paint brush for the first time, and has never put it down again.

Today, Kip is a Los Angeles based artist. He is a fully self-taught acrylic painter with a passion for contemporary portrait art. Kip has exhibited his art at several galleries and events across the country, and amongst other honors was named artist-in-residence at the Libra Foundation 2020, contributing artist winner of the LA Lakers In The Paint Art Program 2023, winner of the Billboard Creative award 2024, and most recently the participation in an exhibit at Sotheby’s Los Angeles.

Artist Statement:

My artistic expression is guided by my everlasting question of “Where Is Home?”. My background spans three countries (Germany, Kenya, USA) across three continents. My life has fundamentally been guided by the feelings of belonging and othering in the context of my Blackness in these places. I am channeling these unique insights in my portrait paintings, as I depict African people through a diasporic lense in order to (re-)connect the two.

My current series highlights the emotional bonds between people and the layered emotional expressions tied to those relationships. The choice of monochromatic colors in the portraits is deliberate to strip away context and preconceived notions of African people. I aim to universalize the subjects’ lived experience, and make it relatable across cultural and geographic borders. I want to look past our differences and focus on the inherent sameness of our human experience, as I expand my own understanding of belonging.

Connect with Kipkemoi at @kipkemoiart.

Location: Steinway St & 23rd Rd, Queens, NY

Tariq AlObaid is a visual artist and creative designer existing between his motherland of Kuwait and New York City. Being introduced to the art world as a child through his grandfather, Tariq's first love was filmmaking, entranced by the vivid storytelling of directors like Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick. He continued evolving his artistic talents through photography, graphic design, and collage artwork, earning him art direction placements on various projects, including music artwork and haute couture fashion branding. His visual style is informed by his eclectic Kuwaiti heritage, and he finds himself in the works of Carlota Guerrero and Neil Krug.

Connect with Tariq at @trqalobaid.

Location: Atlantic Ave & Classon Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Wen Liu was born in Shanghai, China, and is based in Brooklyn, New York. She is a MacDowell fellowship awardee for 2025; RAiR Foundation Grantee for 2022; DCASE Individual Artists Program Grantee for 2018, 2019 and 2020 and received the Illinois Arts Council Agency 2020 Artist Fellowship Award. She attended residencies at RAiR Foundation, MASS MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, ACRE and Hyde Park Art Center. Her work has been exhibited at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut, Culture Center in Chicago, Lubeznik Center for the Arts in Michigan City, the National Grand Theater in Beijing, China and Roswell Museum in New Mexico.

Connect with Wen at @wen_liu_1217.

Location: Utica Ave & Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Gordon Hull is a New York based artist and creative director working across various mediums. He describes his work as 'lo-fi magic' and is interested in expressing optimism, energy and an openness to everything. 

Connect with Gordon at @gordon_harrison_hull.

Selected Gallery Artists

Selected gallery artists are Adewale Agunbiade-Maye, Alexander Deschamps, Amanda Kleinhans, Anastasios Poneros, Anne Kristoff, Antonio Pulgarin, Arnest Makhin, Azikiwe Aboagye, Carolina Jimenez, Christina Barrera, Dana Robinson, Francesca Magnani, Gordon Hull, Henry Morales, Hwichan Ko, Itzel Basualdo, Jacqueline Yvonne Tull, Javaid Nayyar, Jeanne Verdoux, Jesse Egner, John Kitses, Jonathan Yubi, Josh Fogel, Kyra Clemons, Lauren Roeder, LiLi Jackson, Mary Rozzi, Matthew Morrocco, Samantha Sutcliffe, Stevia Roxanne, Tara Fay Coleman, Tariq AlObaid, Tod Seelie, Tony Quera, Vanessa Feder, Walter Cruz & Lamar Robillard.

These selected artists will be exhibited at Satellite Gallery, 279 Broome St, NYC, with a one-night opening reception anniversary party on May 30, 2025, 6-9p.

Performance Artist

An interactive performance will showcase Autumn Breon using her body to interrogate the insidious nature of censorship, highlighting cases that were reported by individuals in 2025.

As these censorship incidents appear across the LED screens of a mobile billboard with animation by Brindha Kumar, Breon will pull the truck as she walks down a two-lane street in the Lower East Side. Viewers are invited to share the weight of the truck (and censorship’s inevitable pathway to disinformation) by receiving a piece of information that a person reported after censorship. The performance aims to amplify accurate information to combat attempts at silencing dissent.

Curators

Anne-Laure Lemaitre is a New York-based curator, writer, and creative producer specialized in site-specific and in-situ art. She advocates for anchoring art in its context as a means to further its impact, trigger new perspectives, and explore new conceptual territories and separates her time between consulting for corporations and institutions, writing about practices she strongly believes in, and executing curatorial programs focused on emerging art. She serves on the advisory committee of Civil Arts and Beverly’s.

Connect with Anne-Laure at @annelauresees.

RJ Rushmore is a writer, curator and public art advocate. He is the founder of the street art blog Vandalog and culture-jamming campaign Art in Ad Places. As a curator, he has collaborated with Poster House, Mural Arts Philadelphia, The L.I.S.A. Project NYC and Haverford College. Rushmore’s writing has appeared in Hyperallergic, The Philadelphia Citizen, Complex, and numerous books.

Connect with RJ at @rjrushmore.

Zahra Sherzad is founder of Noorvision LLC, an NYC based independent production company, and has been involved in the contemporary art world for 20 years curating and producing a number of art shows with recognized artists, musicians, DJs, filmmakers, and creatives that have gone on to define street culture as a whole. Currently, Zahra is Head of Visual Art and an Impact Producer for Level Forward, an entertainment company that develops, produces, and finances high quality entertainment with Oscar, Emmy, and Tony-winning producers. Clients have included: Zappos, Amazon Music, Rockstar Games, AK Worldwide, No Commission Art Fair (Swizz Beats), Moniker Art Fair, Times Square Arts Alliance, and Creative Time.

Connect with Zahra at @zahrasherzad.

Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo are internationally recognized curators, cultural commentators, and documentarians of street art and graffiti, best known as the founders of Brooklyn Street Art (BSA), a leading platform dedicated to showcasing and analyzing urban art movements worldwide. 

With a keen eye for emerging and established artists, they have curated exhibitions and cultural programs in cities such as New York, Berlin, LA, and Moscow, where they co-curated Artmossphere, Russia’s first-ever street art biennale. Their curatorial work has also been featured at institutions such as Urban Nation Museum in Berlin, where they took over the entire museum to curate the career retrospective of “Subway Art” photographer Martha Cooper, called “Martha Cooper: Taking Pictures” from October 2020 to May 2022.  

Since 2008 they have published more than 6,000 articles on their website BrooklynStreetArt.com, documenting the ever-evolving global street art scene and advancing the dialogue between street art, graffiti, and contemporary visual culture. Their extensive travels have taken them to five continents, allowing them to engage with artists and movements in vastly different cultural contexts from Miami to Mexico City to Marrakesh.  

Harrington and Rojo have lectured at academic and cultural institutions worldwide, including the Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (LACMA), Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Christie’s Education, various art fairs and festivals. They are founding members of the Martha Cooper Library in Berlin where they have begun the first Martha Cooper Scholarship for aspiring photographers in 2025. Their expertise is sought after in discussions about how street art intersects with fine art, activism, and public space. 

A defining aspect of their impact on the global graffiti and street art scene is their unwavering commitment to archiving, curating, and critically analyzing the movement. By meticulously preserving its history and evolution, they ensure that future generations can engage with its depth and significance. As leading voices in contemporary urban art discourse, they play a crucial role in shaping its narrative, bridging the divide between independent street culture and mainstream recognition with insight and authority.

Connect with Steven & Jamie at @bkstreetart.

Travis Rix is the founder and director of SaveArtSpace.

Connect with Travis at @trvsrx.

SaveArtSpace

Founded in 2015, SaveArtSpace is a non-profit organization that works to create an urban gallery experience, launching exhibitions that address intersectional themes and foster a message of social change that benefits the working class. By placing culture over commercialism, SaveArtSpace aims to empower artists from all walks of life and inspire a new generation of young creatives and activists.