Jetsonorama and Wheat Paste Art On The Reservation

During the last year or so, a new kind of “graffiti” has been showing up on abandoned buildings, old billboards and rusted out oil tanks on the Navajo Nation. A street artist who goes by the name of Jetsonorama (who sometimes works with another artist, Yote, and No Reservation Required) has been plastering these places with giant, black & white, cutout photographs and using wheat paste to fix them in place. They are somewhat ephemeral by nature, getting torn up by wind, rain and snow.

consequently, the project is interesting on several levels.  i’ve had to ask myself what it means to present street art in a community that has no tradition or history of it? what does it mean to have that street art be documentary photographs of people from the community?  how can i present them in such a way that some people don’t feel this is a form of witchcraft?

living here makes me remain responsible for the images i put up, sensitive to the people represented and their cultural mores.  if i didn’t live here or know the value system, i’d put up more provocative work (like the “puppy love” series i placed in flagstaff), as opposed to straight documentary photographs.  whenever i talk with people from the community about the project and what i hope to accomplish with it, i emphasize my desire to share with them the elements of the culture i consider beautiful and/or at risk of being lost.  most people get that and are thankful for it.

so, it’s totally liberating and invigorating for me to be able to express myself in this visual language.   the whole project has provided a new way for me to interact with the community, really feel like i’m giving them love in the form of this art and to question the ephemeral nature of life.  

For more on Jetsonorama, you can visit his flickr page, the visually-striking Unurth Street Art site and his youtube channel with many time-lapse videos of the process like this: