Street artist Lady Pink to create mural at MoMA PS1.
Portrait of Lady Pink. 2018. Courtesy of the artist.
Graffiti artist and painter Lady Pink will create a new public mural on the facade of MoMA PS1 in Queens, New York. Her work will inaugurate the museum’s new annual Plaza Mural program, which opens on June 26th and will be on view through spring 2026.
Lady Pink was selected by a jury of Queens-based cultural leaders, including independent curator Camila Palomino; Lindsey Berfond, assistant curator at the Queens Museum; and Isabella Bustamante, founder of Long Island City’s Teen Art Salon. The mural will incorporate typical elements of Lady Pink’s practice, such as the New York City skyline and the 7 train. It will pay tribute to Queens and 5Pointz, the former graffiti landmark across from PS1, with imagery that reflects the city’s layered history and contested urban landscape.
“For the inaugural MoMA PS1 Plaza Mural, we looked to New York–based artists with deep ties to Queens and our city,” Connie Butler, director of MoMA PS1, said in a press statement. “We’re excited to see our locality embedded in Lady Pink’s stunning commission, which will engage both our neighbors and passersby alike with its vivid imagery and synthesis of local histories.”
Born in Ambato, Ecuador in 1964 and raised in Astoria, Queens, Lady Pink began writing graffiti in 1979. Known for tagging subway cars with her tag, “Pink,” she emerged as one of the few women in the male-dominated graffiti scene of the early 1980s. During this period, she formed the all-women street art collective Ladies of the Arts. Her studio paintings are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others.
Her mural Pink (2007) was prominently featured on the 5Pointz building, which was destroyed when the building was demolished in 2013 and 2014 to make way for residential development. In 2018, the Brooklyn Supreme Court awarded damages to 45 artists whose work was lost in the process. Her new mural is set to feature a giant stone foot bearing tags of fellow 5Pointz artists.
