Created both by amateurs and professionals, a vast collection of artworks rapidly spread on social media with hashtags such as #blacklivesmatter, #georgefloyd, #icantbreathe, #saytheirnames and #BLM.

Abby Zeciroski, 44, a Chicago based artist, combines traditional print images, digital scans and painting to present her views on segregation. 

Zeciroski has also been an activist in Chicago for LGBT rights, police brutality, the drug war, animal rights for more than 20 years.

“In my city, there are invisible walls,” Zeciroski said. “I want people to go beyond slogans. I want people to realize that all my art is interconnected.”

Emily, 20, painted a portrait of George Floyd’s face with his last words “I can’t breathe” and got almost four thousand likes on Instagram. She said that social media platforms enable young artists like her to deliver their messages to the world faster than ever.

“The fact that I posted a painting of George Floyd and someone knew him saw it and thanked me for it, It blew my mind,” Emily said. “I’m so happy that I am part of this movement now.”

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Born in Ghana, international artist, Tafa, opens his Harlem studio and shares his inspirations.

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An artist’s dream from Pavement Pieces on Vimeo.

Jeronim Hajdaraj was born in Kosovo. His family immigrated to New York City in 1991. He is a self-taught artist, specializing in comic book drawings. With a colorful and creative portfolio of nostalgic comic book heroes, Hajdarajincorporates legends and heroes from his native Kosovo as way to pay tribute to his heritage.

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Art by Victoria Hunter McKenzie, who paints New York iconography on the back of used Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) MetroCards. She was approached by MTA officials in April with concerns regarding copyright infringement. Photo by Eva Saviano.

Until recently, no one had really heard of Victoria Hunter McKenzie. But she—and her now infamous MetroCard oil paintings—just got a huge media boost.

The East Village blog EV Grieve, and the much larger news blog Gothamist reported on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) effort to discuss a licensing deal and fee with McKenzie.

“Initially, I had left the magnetic strip visible and the little strip of color that says ‘Please insert this way,’” said McKenzie of the East Village. “Nothing else was visible. But I had included a photograph of what it looked like before I painted it. “

As misappropriated use of MetroCards and other transit materials has become increasingly common, MTA officials have had more run-ins with artists like McKenzie.

Peter Drake, Dean of the New York Academy of the Arts, or the NYAA, said the first artist he knew to paint on MetroCards was NYAA student Imogen Slater.

Slater, 33, came to New York from England in 2009 to earn her graduate degree in painting from the NYAA.

“I was given an assignment to paint a series of small paintings and I wanted to do something different. In my family we have a tradition of not using things for the purpose for which they were designed,” Slater said. “I collected some [cards] from subway floors and staircases on my way home. With that surface, I made a series of self-portraits that I presented at NYAA, which then became the inspiration for the MetroCard art show.”

Lower East Side gallery Sloan Fine Art hosted Single Fare 2 in March, the second annual exhibit of artworks done on MetroCards featuring more than 2,000 submissions.

“It’s come up and blown over in a sense,” said Drake of concerns about MTA. “The MTA was getting a lot of attention; people were writing about them. People saw the MetroCard as kind of a metaphor for the self…there are thousands of them, billions of people. It was a nice way to build a community.”

Drake said MTA never bothered him about the exhibit since he marketed the show as “selling art that is on or on top of or built out of MetroCards.”

A painting by Victoria Hunter McKenzie on a discarded Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) MetroCard. She saw a boost in sales after a recent run-in with MTA officials over copyright infringement.

The same could not be said for McKenzie. Three weeks ago, she received a letter from MTA that indicated her work infringed on its copyrighted intellectual property. The letter—signed by an intern at the corporation’s marketing department—stated MTA believed her work made inappropriate use of the MetroCard brand and logo.

The letter read: “The MTA has a well-established product licensing program which markets authorized versions of such products. While we have no record of your firm requesting or being granted such authorization, we are prepared to initiate discussions with you about acquiring a license from us.”

Panicked by the accusations, McKenzie removed all MetroCard-related items from her website. She later reposted the MetroCard paintings yet removed a “before picture” showing an unpainted card. McKenzie also avoided all occurrences of the word “MetroCard,” opting instead for phrasing such as “New York transit card,” and included a legal disclaimer indicating that her work is in no way endorsed by MTA.

McKenzie communicated her frustration on her personal blog, The Night Shift. The post soon garnered media attention from several news outlets, including The Village Voice and The Wall Street Journal.

The coverage ironically sparked her first business sale.

“I only had 18 made,” McKenzie said of her subway card paintings, adding that she put them up for sale on Etsy.com. “People had ‘Liked’ them, but I hadn’t sold any until I blogged about it.”

McKenzie is a computer graphics artist for ABC News and considers art a side project. She thought the use of MetroCards would be an interesting new medium.

“I had been painting some New York iconography, New York water towers, and thought, well, I’ll do a series of these on the MetroCard, you know, icon on icon,” she said. “Someone buys a painting of New York and they get a little piece of New York.”

Sabina Sosa discovered McKenzie’s work when she read about her conflict with MTA.

“It was on Facebook via the New York Post newsfeed. I watched her video interview and was outraged,” Sosa said. She purchased two of VH McKenzie’s transit card paintings for $48 plus $2 shipping. “What I liked was it was different and familiar at the same time. When you’re done with a MetroCard, it’s garbage but Victoria made it into a miniature masterpiece.”

John Breznicky, a New York City artist who also use Etsy.com to sell poster-sized abstractions of a subway map, received a warning notification from MTA similar to that of McKenzie’s.

“I was initially contacted by an intern at the MTA requesting that I remove my listing immediately because I might be infringing on MTA copyrights,” Breznicky said. “I did not comply because I knew we had not used any MTA branding, logos, designs, etc. and I knew that our design had been changed significantly from the actual NYC subway map.”

Breznicky revised his Etsy listing to exclude the words “MTA” or “New York City subway” and has not been contacted again by MTA.

McKenzie said Mark Heavey, MTA Chief of Marketing and Advertising, told her the issue was not that she painted the cards, but that she used the MTA logo in her marketing.

She has not heard from MTA since the revision of her site, The Night Shift. McKenzie sold all of her transit card art and has been commissioned to paint more.

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Maria Davis hosts M.A.D. Wednesday's, an event held on the second Wednesday of every month to feature new artists and raise awareness about HIV/AIDS in the African-American community. Photo by Jasmine Brown.

Beau Bostic stepped onto the stage of a Harlem nightclub with the swag of a hip-hop artist. In a spotless oversized white T-shirt and baseball cap, Bostic grasped the microphone and began to spit out lyrics about the trials of street life. At the front door, patrons paid a $10 cover charge and picked up free condoms.

Bostic is just one of the half-dozen artists featured recently as part of “M.A.D. Wednesday’s,” a show held on the second Wednesday of every month at the Shrine World Music Venue at 2271 Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blvd. in Harlem to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS in the African-American community.

Maria Davis, 51, an AIDS/HIV activist who hosts the monthly event, started M.A.D. Wednesday’s in the 1990s to provide a space where young R&B and hip-hop singers and comedians could hone their skills. It has showcased artists such as Brandy, Monica, Jay-Z, and the late Bernie Mac.

Davis still holds the event to promote new talent, but after being diagnosed with AIDS in 1998, she incorporated HIV/AIDS awareness into the show. She now hands out condoms and raises funds for the AIDS Walk in addition to letting patrons have a sneak peak at the newest up-and-coming artists.

“Young people are so heavily informed by the hip-hop community,” Davis said. “I think that it would be a great thing for them to not only give the message of safe sex, but to give hope to the hopeless.”

Bostic, 30, of Red Hook, Brooklyn, is a hip-hop artist who heard about the event through Facebook.

He said he’s grateful to people like Davis who teach him about the risks of having unprotected sex.

“Sometimes you get into situations where you may be on the way to being intimate with a female and without a condom,” Bostic said. “It’s only through these outlets, news papers, radio, magazine, TV, it is only through these outlets that those thoughts start to rush into your head and you are like, ‘You know, let’s just wait. Let’s just do the right thing.’”

Davis was a successful hip-hop promoter, soon to be featured on the debut album of rapper Jay-Z when she received a letter that changed her life. She had taken an HIV test as part of an application for a life insurance policy and the results came back positive.

“I thought that my life was over because at the time when I found out I was HIV positive in 1995, medications weren’t even out yet, they were just starting to get a handle on the disease,” Davis said. “At that time we thought that HIV was a gay white man’s disease.”

Davis contracted HIV unknowingly from her boyfriend, a man she thought she was going to marry. Three years later, she was diagnosed with AIDS.

“I was scared and afraid and thinking about death,” she said.

Her health took a turn for the worst. The disease was eating away at her body and she was rapidly losing weight. Davis said she was on the verge of death when she turned to the Bible for help.

She became an AIDS activist soon after and has since dedicated her life to teaching African-Americans about the disease.

HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects African-Americans. According to the U.S. Office of Minority Health, under the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, African-Americans were nine times more likely than whites to be diagnosed with HIV in 2008. And while African-Americans represent just 12 percent of the U.S. population, they accounted for 48 percent of all new HIV infections in 2009, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Davis said she still encounters many myths about HIV/AIDS.

“There are still people that think that AIDS is a curse, that people that get AIDS deserve to get AIDS, that their behavior should have been different, that they are promiscuous,” Davis said.

The Centers for Disease Control attributes the high rate of HIV to lack of awareness, limited access to healthcare and HIV prevention education. The CDC also calls attention to the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS in the African-American community, which prevents many at risk individuals from seeking testing and counseling due to a fear of being shamed.

Deborah Levine, Vice President of Community Development for the National Black Leadership Coalition on AIDS based in New York City, called the numbers “staggering.”

Levine said it is important to talk outside the box about sex and sexuality, and to take the message from inside the doctor’s office to more unconventional venues.

“It starts with prevention, it starts with telling people about what the epidemic is, how they can not be come infected, where they can get tested and if positive where they can get treatment,” she said.

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