Moving Memory (2024)
LOCATION: ASTOR STREET > EMMETT STREET
Moving Memory by collaborating artists Layqa Nuna Yawar and Don Rimx, features large letter forms spelling “Lenape hoking,” the indigenous name for the land. The text also includes “Abya Yala,” a term used by indigenous peoples to name this continent, derived from the Kuna language of Panama and Colombia. The third layer of the piece is its title, which is also spelled out inside the letterforms. This new artwork, which can be seen from Murray Street to Astor Street, serves as a land acknowledgment for the entire initiative as well as a reminder of the constant evolution of our relationship with the land.
Layqa Nuna Yawar
Layqa Nuna Yawar (b. 1984, Cuenca Ecuador) is a public artist and multidisciplinary storyteller based in the ancestral lands of the Lenni-Lenape: current-day Newark, NJ. His work is best known for large-scale community-based murals, intricate portrait paintings, and multimedia projects that center the complex narratives of immigrant, black, indigenous, and subaltern populations. His artwork aims to disrupt established semiotic systems and reimagine them in service of shared liberation and a better future.
Layqa’s name is an invention that honors the Kichwa-Kañari legacy of his descent. His practice is driven by the act of reclaiming history as well as the inherent rupture and repair of the immigrant experience. His work exists at the intersection between migrant alienation and belonging, cross-cultural identity and decolonization, and between the private and the public realms.
His work has been recently commissioned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and Munich Airport NJ, in partnership with Public Art Fund and can be permanently found at the new Terminal A at Newark Liberty International Airport. His collaborative work is also now on view at MoMA PS1 in New York City. Other Recent awards include an Artist Impact Award from the Newark Museum of Art, Monument Lab Research Residency, a Creative Catalyst Fund Fellowship by the City of Newark, an Art Changemaker Award from the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, and a Moving Walls Fellowship by Open Society Foundations among others. Layqa has held multiple teaching residencies, including projects with the United Nations World Food Programme, Casita Maria, and currently teaches at Rutgers University. His murals can be found in cities and communities around the world.
Layqa Nuna Yawar co-curated the {PORTRAITS} mural with Rebecca Pauline Jampol.
Instagram: @layqanunayawar
"A lot of times people cannot imagine what a mural would do to a community so you have create it. Murals can create this space of imagination."
Moving Memory (2016)
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“Memory in Migration” is a tribute and celebration to migration movements that have and continue to shape #Newark as well as the ever changing USA. The iconography of wings, a changing moon, a rabbit and gold chains speak of migration and movement, which is a human right and created the contemporary face of Newark.
* This mural was made in collaboration with Don Rimx.