Magazine Spotlight

Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada is a Cuban-American Contemporary Artist. Born in Cuba and raised in the United States. He was a founding member of the early ‘90s New York Culture Jamming movement and during this period he launched street art interventions upon billboards and public advertising. His process and philosophy were highlighted in the ‘Culture Jamming’ chapter in the book No Logo by Naomi Klein. Throughout his career, Gerada has collaborated with multiple organisations and institutions, such as Google Research Lab, The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, the United Nations Sustainable Development Group, 350.Org among others. Working towards positive initiatives and projects that attempt to call attention on a global level, Gerada is committed to producing public art that raises awareness of environmental and social issues like climate change and human rights. He predominantly creates his work in urban spaces on a large scale, with the scale of the work reflecting the importance of the issue.

My Projects

BYTE THE CANDY

BYTE THE CANDY is a 16m x 6m painted mural depicting the reality of how technology is penetrating our everyday lives. In 1984, Neil Postman gave a talk about how we are “Amusing Ourselves to Death”. Today, we are living something beyond what Neil Postman was warning us about, social media platforms, with a system of algorithms that have no conscience or mercy. These algorithms work incessantly to keep our constant attention to see advertising and propaganda, and in that way become more efficient with the use of personal data, achieving the ability to target advertising that coincides exactly with the profile of interests of each user.

Monumental Moments - The Hug

Monumental Moments - The Hug is a nearly 10-foot-tall bronze sculpture that immortalizes the monumental times everyone has experienced during the pandemic and celebrates the human spirit, the resilience of the mental health community and all those who have been impacted by the pandemic. The sculpture depicts two adults and a child in an embrace, and the green ribbon woven throughout represents the importance of continued mental health awareness and support, while highlighting the significance of last year’s Mental Illness Awareness Week and World Mental Health Day. Performing during the reveal was the internationally renowned, Boston-based Me2/Orchestra, the world's only known classical music organization created specifically for individuals living with mental illness and the people who support them.

Nourishing Self-esteem

This land artwork is of an ephemeral nature, commissioned by Fundación Crisálida, an initiative for integration into the workplace of nine people with intellectual disabilities. Created in three phases, the work utilizes the change of the seasons and the change of the colours of the earth. This first phase of the artwork was realised using the green colour of the wheat field, the light tan color of the soil and the dark tone of compost, on a 3-hectare plot of land in the rural setting of Estopiñán del Castillo, a small town in Aragón, Spain. On the ground we see a pair of hands (the small hand of a child and an adult hand) that are coming together. With their hands, people at Fundación Crisálida bakes bread on a daily basis for their town and the towns nearby.