The Guerrilla Gallery: A Rapid Ethnography about a Collaborative Public Art Installation in East Harlem

Abstract

In the heart of East Harlem, New York City, a collective of artists called the Harlem Art Collective created the “Guerrilla Gallery”: A collaborative public art installation on a construction fence, to give residents a place to express themselves through art and messages. While East Harlem is characterized by murals depicting Puerto Rican flags and political causes, these symbols were absent in the Guerrilla Gallery, which instead exhibited predominantly Mexican cultural and political symbols. Was a territorial contestation taking place through art, a sort of identity negotiation to determine who “belongs” in the neighborhood? (Zukin, 1995) This article presents an ethnographic and photographic narrative of the Guerrilla Gallery and what it means to the people who live in the neighborhood. Using rapid ethnographic assessment procedures (Low et al., 2005), coupled with photographic cartography (Ulmer, 2017), this study presents the findings of interviews and the Guerrilla Gallery. The analysis revealed that, although there were instances of aesthetic conflict occurring in the gallery, these were not exclusively related to national cultures; gender and racial conflicts were also observed. Strong expressions of aesthetic empathy were also identified in the artwork. The Guerrilla Gallery became a meaningful space for the community in East Harlem, who not only appreciated it because of its aesthetic value and the possibility of expression it offers, but also because residents were able to connect with their roots, strengthen their local identity and pride, express empathy and solidarity with other social groups in the neighborhood or in faraway places, and resist changes or policies that affected their everyday lives.