Folklife Festival Narrative Session: Tats Cru - Muralists and Graffiti Artists
About the Project
The 2001 Smithsonian Folklife Festival celebrated just a few of the innumerable manifestations of traditional culture in New York City. In addition to a shared urban culture, most New Yorkers also have one or more reservoirs of specialized traditional knowledge, which they have acquired from their ethnic and/or religious upbringing, working in a particular occupation, or living in a specific area of the city. The innumerable, multifaceted ways in which these factors interact are what make New York and New Yorkers so fascinating. Tats Cru, a diverse group of Bronx-based artists specializing in street art in New York, chronicles their transition from making graffiti art on New York’s subway system in the 1980s to producing commercial art for big brands. They discuss their appreciation for community identity and mural art and its influence on their urban artforms. The artists speak of identifying styles found in different New York boroughs and how each community sees these street artists as well as the shifts in the graffiti movement from nuisance to respected art form. See the finding aid for this program here.
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