The Gantalism Dedication (2019)
MANUEL ACEVEDO with PINK DRAGON SYNDICATE
Location: Treat Place, Newark | Phase I | Photo Credit: Anthony Alvarez
The Gantalism Dedication mural is a celebration of Newark’s own artist, Jerry Gant a.k.a 2 Nasty Nas. Using a selection of Gant’s journal entries and renderings as source material, the artists presented a visual narrative of the artist’s inner voice, socio-political identity, and metamorphosis from a graffiti artist to a multi-disciplinary artist who worked to heighten the exposure of a fine art aesthetic in urban communities.
Gant’s artistic expressions included artifacts of the community’s layered past—brick, broken glass, found objects, broken TV sets—juxtaposed against a conflicted present through assemblage and spray paint. The small installation bombs that he was known to drop on derelict lots, once occupied by one and two-family homes, in turn, became occupied by the African ancestral spirit that he evoked through his forms and figures.
Similarly, with his trademark flat black paint, Gant’s visual poetry honored elements of “blackness” city-wide, as the vernacular spoken by the people. Red, Black, and Green is inspired by derivatives of the Black Liberation or Pan-African Flag. The red-colored section symbolically unites all peoples of the African diaspora, represented by one of many ancestral figures illustrated in Gant’s last drawing book, dated 2018. The black center presents a message Gant believed necessary for all Black people whose urban existence is to heal from all forms of oppression and trauma by calling out, “Detox The Ghetto”. The green color represents the abundant creativity and knowledge of self-wealth as a young male with Gant’s name inscribed on his head and face.
About the Artist:
Manuel Acevedo is a multi-disciplinary artist born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. His work combines projected image, wall drawing, animation, and photography to explore how light and movement shape experience. Through various media he employs visual language in ways that transform flat, static images into active spaces of experimentation.
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