ONE WALL MOVEMENT
About
Launched in the Summer of 2022, ONE WALL MOVEMENTis a public art initiative that commissions, muralists, graffiti artists, writers, and street artists who identify as Black, Indigenous, POC, PGM, womxn, nonbinary, and/or gender non-conforming. ONE WALL MOVEMENT is a joint initiative between Hi-ARTS and Curator Ayana Ayo. Recognizing the importance of art and design and their contributions to public spaces, ONE WALL MOVEMENT aims to center the voices of often marginalized and underrepresented artists by commissioning and supporting artists to produce large-scale public murals.
ONE WALL MOVEMENT commissions artists with an interest in or experience with community-engaged art and with a history of working within their communities. Commissioned artists are provided with public-facing art as a canvas to creatively express reflections of their lived experiences with no restrictions on their subject matter or process.
This process allows for work that is both inherently socially relevant and creatively strong. By centering artists from these communities, we contribute to making New York City a more creatively liberated place. Working closely with Hi-ARTS and Project Curator Ayana Ayo, the initiative is artist-led and designed to support the artist’s vision, project, and career trajectory. For each production, we will collaborate with the artist to create accessible interactive programs that will engage local community members in conversation and site-specific activations unique to themes in the artist’s work.
ONE WALL MOVEMENT aims to:
Empower and amplify the narratives of marginalized and/or historically underrepresented muralists, writers, and street artists;
Cultivate and support emerging and established artists by providing an opportunity for development and building a professional artistic pipeline to larger institutions; and
Engage the East Harlem and New York City communities through public art.
In partnership with independent cultural art worker Ayana Ayo, ONE WALL MOVEMENT was launched in the Summer of 2022 and welcomed Mattaya Fitts as our inaugural muralist. Learn more.
ONE WALL MOVEMENT Artists
Selection Committee
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Ysabel Mejia Abreu (she/her) is an immigrant, community advocate, and artist living in East Harlem for 26 years. She works as Director of Outreach at Union Settlement and often volunteers as a Face Painter for community events in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx. From 2017 to 2019, she served as Co-Chair of Hike the Heights, a public health grassroots initiative that started as a project to combat multiple problems (youth violence, obesity, sedentary lifestyles, and displacement) by activating public spaces and bringing people to underused parts of NYC parks. This project is 19 years strong and led by volunteers, including many local artists and community organizers.
Ysabel was one of several artists who collaborated with Uptown Grand Central’s community beautification project in 2021, for which she painted a small mural on East 125th Street in honor of Zaila Avant-garde and James Baldwin.
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Angel Bellaran is an independent Curator and Scholar with an MA in Curatorial Studies from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dublin, Ireland, and a BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. A third-generation multi-racial American and visual arts activist, Bellaran was the first female and Latinx director of both the MA Curatorial Practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and the Wellington B. Gray Gallery of East Carolina University School of Art and Design, in Greenville, North Carolina.
Her curatorial practice is action-orientated and often collaborative, promoting inclusivity through representation: past projects include the Nasty Women Exhibition Movement (2016) and Toppled Monuments Archive (2020). Bellaran’s academic research identifies and analyzes histories that challenge conventional wisdoms, with a focus on inspiring cultural change from within; in October of 2022, Bellaran shared her ground-breaking research into Black Mountain College's diversity and recruitment strategies at the ReVIEWING Black Mountain College International Conference in Asheville, North Carolina. Currently in pursuit of a doctoral degree, Bellaran teaches for the non-profit organization Studio Montclair while managing the artist studios at Project for Empty Space, a self described "woman-run, femme-powered, People of the Global Majority/BIPOC, Queer, and unapologetically radical ecosystem for creatives'' in Newark, New Jersey.
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Jeremy R. Del Rio, Esq. (he/him), co-founded and leads Thrive Collective, a nonprofit that creates hope and opportunity through arts and mentoring in public schools. He also connects, trains, and mentors youth workers nationally, and has taught youth and community development at Alliance and Fuller seminaries since 2004. He has consulted businesses and nonprofits on leadership and strategy since 2000; and co-founded and directed Generation Xcel, a holistic youth center in Manhattan, from 1996-2006. Jeremy was the founding youth pastor at Abounding Grace Ministries (1994-2004) and also worked as a corporate attorney at Dewey Ballantine in New York before resigning after 9/11 to lead relief work at Ground Zero.
He has contributed to six books, including Deep Justice in a Broken World (Zondervan/YS 2008) and The Justice Project (Baker Books, 2009), and his articles have appeared in dozens of publications. Jeremy received his B.A. (with honors) and J.D. from New York University. He also has Certificates in Nonprofit Management and Leadership from Columbia University's Graduate School of Business and the DeVos Urban Leadership Initiative. Jeremy can be contacted at ThriveCollective.org.
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Mattaya Fitts (she/her) is a visual artist whose practice encompasses a multi-disciplinary approach within a studio and street art discipline. Using figurative elements, Mattaya depicts aspects of the human condition in a multi-layered way, inviting the viewer to interpret the work through a lens informed by individual and collective cultural narratives, earth’s ecology, and divine femininity. Using vibrant color palettes, her often fantastical artworks appear as images in which fiction and reality merge and meanings shift to create new worlds and characters that continually evolve.
Based in Boston and New York City, her public artworks can be found throughout Massachusetts and New York, including a wide range of clients and partners, from the City of Boston to Spotify.
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Taina Traverso (she/her) is a Multimedia Artist, Activist and Community Organizer.
She is the Founder and Executive Productor of Applause TV for 23 years, aired in 1985 on Paragon TV followed by MFF (Free Speech TV). Applause TV was a variety show featuring entertainment, cultural, social and political segments. These were educational components enlightening viewers on the history of enslaved Africans of the Diaspora. Additionally, the program shared information on peoples of African descent and their contributions to the world, with an emphasis on Puerto Rico. The show received two awards.
She also has taught art, theater, dance in visual arts in Henry Street Settlement's Urban Family Center’s Junior High School. Henry Street Settlement is a aTier II organization that provides social, educational, and economic services to homeless and victims of domestic violence.
As a Manhattan Community Board 11 Member, and Chair of the Cultural Arts and Land Making Committee, she created the Annual Arts and Cultural Networking Celebration in 2004 with the purpose to bring local, national and international artists and cultural institutions to East Harlem to stimulate economic development through the arts. In addition, during her tenor she received several proclamations and letters of recognition presented by Congressman Charles Rangel, Mayor Bloomberg, Senator Serrano and others.
Taina is also the Founder and CEO of the East Harlem Development Program Applause which ran from 1998 to 2001. The award winning program was recognized for outstanding holistic philosophy and operation and was selected by the United Nation as a U.S. representative for the Sweden Youth Summit 2001.
She also collaborated with Los Hermanos Fraternos de Loisa for five years by inviting 75 students to perform Bomba at the Puerto Rican Day Parade. Tiana was the Madrina for Los Hermanos Fraterno de Losis 2003 and has been honored twice by El Museo del Barrio. She is also an organizing member of the Museo Del Barrio’s Annual Three Kings Parade.
Musa, Mattaya Fitts, 2022, Cherry Tree Park, Harlem, NY, Image Credit: Eleanor Kipping