Street Art in Brooklyn: Agoch and Mandragora's Urban Murals
This paper offers a close, first-person analysis of two street murals located on Bedford and 10th Street in Brooklyn, New York — one by Jorit Agoch depicting a Native American child's face, and one by Leticia Mandragora depicting a blue-faced woman. Drawing on direct observation and scholarly sources on public art and urban regeneration, the paper explores how the murals communicate themes of shared humanity, transcendence, and community identity. It considers the transient nature of street art, the murals' relationship to their urban environment, and their qualitative impact on the surrounding neighborhood, ultimately arguing that such works invite viewers into a silent, cross-cultural dialogue about what it means to be human.
- The Murals and Their Setting: Description of murals, location, and artists' themes
- Encountering the Works in Person: Author's direct observation and passerby reactions
- Transience, Medium, and Meaning: Street art's fleeting lifespan and its emotional resonance
- Art Beyond the Museum: Why street context vitalizes art more than museums
- Community Impact and Urban Renewal: Murals' qualitative effect on neighborhood identity
- An Invitation to Self-Awareness: Murals as call to shared humanity and self-reflection
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What makes this paper effective
- The author grounds abstract themes — humanity, transience, urban renewal — in highly specific, sensory observations made during a real site visit, giving the analysis credibility and immediacy.
- The integration of footnoted scholarly sources (Edelson, Sutherland, Hein, Remesar) is seamless; each citation arises naturally from an observed detail rather than being inserted as a formulaic requirement.
- The paper maintains a consistent, reflective voice throughout, moving from description to interpretation without losing the reader in jargon or overstatement.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper demonstrates contextual art analysis — the practice of interpreting a work of art not in isolation but in relation to its physical environment, its audience, and its social conditions. Rather than applying a single theoretical framework mechanically, the author synthesizes multiple perspectives (experiential aesthetics via Hein, disposable art via Sutherland, urban regeneration via Remesar) to build a layered reading of two murals as they exist in real time and real space.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with physical description of the murals and their location, then narrates the author's direct encounter with passing viewers. It moves outward from personal experience to broader reflections on transience and the museum-versus-street debate, then widens further to consider neighborhood and civic impact. The annotated bibliography closes the paper, providing source context for each work cited in the analysis.
The Murals and Their Setting
The street art by Jorit Agoch and Leticia Mandragora on Bedford and 10th in Brooklyn, NY, conveys two distinct images: Agoch's is of a Native American child's face. Above and to the right of this painting is a blue-faced woman painted by Mandragora. Both artists used spray cans to paint these pictures, which covered over the graffiti that had been on the wall prior to their appearance. The wall is adjacent to a small building operated by L&S Auto Center Corp. The pictures act as a kind of oasis in an otherwise unremarkable part of town. Graffiti lines the buildings of the street up and down 10th and the side streets Bedford and Driggs.
People walk up and down the streets, and the faces in the images appear to stare out serenely at the people of the city — not commenting, but making an expression of interest and self-worth all the same. The paintings manifest something lurking below the city's business exterior and urban squalor. As Agoch emphasizes on his Facebook page, his painting of the Native American child's face is a reflection not of a Native American but of a human, and that we are all part of the great, big human tribe.1 Mandragora's "blue woman" elaborates on this theme, indicating that the color of one's skin does not matter: whether one is brown or blue, what makes us human is the soul represented in the eyes of everyone.
In these works of street art, the soul is discernible in the characters' eyes, as both look directly at the viewer and challenge the viewer to look back and commune with them in a silent and transcendental act.
Annotated Bibliography
Cartiere, Cameron, and Martin Zebracki. The Everyday Practice of Public Art. New York: Routledge, 2016.
This book shows how murals and public art in cities can connect people within the community and artists around the world by distilling local and global themes and representing them visually. It is helpful in showing the value and impact of public art in creating an identity for a community.
Chaffee, Lyman. Political Protest and Street Art. CT: Greenwood Press, 1993.
This book shows how street art can be infused with political content that helps to express a societal aim. It is useful for this project because it supports the overall understanding of the socio-political context of street art and how street art can be interpreted through a socio-political lens.
Edelson, Bob. New American Street Art: Beyond Graffiti. New York: Soho Books, 1998.
This book emphasizes the fleeting and transitive nature of street art and how one really has to be in the moment to see it and appreciate it. This idea underscores the aim of this project, which is to experience the art directly and in its context and thereby draw a more direct and intimate meaning and interpretation.
Facebook, Inc. "Jorit AGOch's Facebook page." Last modified December 3, 2015. Accessed May 2, 2016. https://www.facebook.com/Jorit-AGOch-380958122050382/
This page of street artist Jorit Agoch provides images of his painting on Bedford and 10th in Brooklyn and offers some of the artistic context behind his work. He describes and names the painting, stating that it is a picture of Camillo of the "hUman Tribe, hUmanity" — an interesting point of view that helps to explain his intentions.
Hein, Hilde. Public Art: Thinking Museums Differently. New York: AltaMira Press, 2006.
This book emphasizes the experiential aspect of art and how it is important to engage art directly in its own contextual setting. Public art allows this to be done in a more authentic way than a museum does.
Knight, Cher Krause. Public Art: Theory, Practice and Populism. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
This book examines the history of public art, from Roosevelt's era to the present. It is helpful in showing how the idea of public art has transformed over the years and developed to include new genres such as graffiti and street art. It provides a useful historical overview of the evolution of public art.
Remesar, Antoni. Urban Regeneration: A Challenge for Public Art. Gran Via: University of Barcelona, 1997.
This book examines the value of street art in urban renewal projects. It asserts that street art helps to express a vital spirit within the urban community that can elevate and heighten the social imperatives and ideals that the community wishes to foster and cultivate.
Sutherland, Adam. Street Art. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 2011.
This book explains popular terms used in street art, such as disposable art (art made to be discarded), illusion, commissioned, and disused. It goes into some of the more interesting details about street art — how it is produced, why, and with what intent — and includes many illustrative pictures and examples. It is useful to this project in the sense that it gives a global perspective on street art and shows how it is a worldwide phenomenon that has taken art out of the museum and put it back in the hands of the public.
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