I walk past this mural almost every day, to and fro the PATH station on my way into and out of Manhattan, and until recently I never really saw it. It was just part of the scenery, another wall doing its job. This morning it finally clicked that between New York and New Jersey there’s enough powerful street art hiding in plain sight to justify giving it a little of SCREW’s digital cover space. Not as decoration, but as recognition. That’s what our spot-colored newsprint covers used to do for underground artists back when getting seen actually meant something.
Street art isn’t underground anymore. But neither is adult content. Both survived by adapting, by refusing to disappear just because the culture decided to sanitize itself. What’s left now is public, confrontational, sometimes sponsored, sometimes ignored, but still doing the work. This new weekly feature is about stopping long enough to notice it.
According to artist Gere Lozano, known as GERALUZ, Cosmic Balance invites the viewer to reflect on the meaning of justice. The mural pulls from the etymology of Maat and weaves it into ideas of law, individual rights, and the universal need for balance and equality. GERALUZ was born in the Amazon jungle of Peru and later transplanted to the New York area, carrying that history straight onto the wall. You can find more about her and her work at www.geralozano.com.
This is SCREW looking outward, not cleaning itself up, just paying attention.
