Crossing the Border: Art and Change in East Harlem

Abstract

Too easily subsumed by its greater neighbor Harlem and dwarfed by larger minority populations in the other boroughs including the Bronx, East Harlem has all but disappeared from the collective memory. This paper tries to recover East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or El Barrio, from its public obscurity and reclaim its importance as a vital urban center in the fabric of Manhattan life. East Harlem is comprised of a rich collection of people from multiple ethnic, economic, and social backgrounds and it is they who provide the backdrop for my analysis of the political life of the neighborhood. The nature of political life in East Harlem is to be found not in the traditional sphere of the political — the acquisition and distribution of power — but in the intersections of the lives of its diverse inhabitants and the articulation of individual and collective assertiveness. I hope to understand and elucidate the composite narratives of urban life in East Harlem through a reading of urban art: architecture, street art, private home design, and photographic documentation of the neighborhood. The aesthetic representations of East Harlem can provide the same insight into the narratives of the neighborhood’s life worlds and life stories as biographical profiles of the inhabitants.