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Despite Risks, Brooklyn Artist Uses Street Trash To Send Positive Messages During Pandemic
By
Ben Yakas
Published Apr 29, 2020
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Sara Erenthal
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Apr 29, 2020
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For several years now, multidisciplinary artist Sara Erenthal has been using the discarded detritus of New Yorkers—abandoned furniture, used mattresses, bookcases, shards of mirrors and broken TVs—as the canvasses for her artwork. "I realized that I could take something off the street, and turn something that was useless into something valuable," she told Gothamist. In addition to her studio work, she has been creating one of these pieces of street art—usually featuring her self-portrait and some message reflecting her state of mind—almost every day, mostly in and around her neighborhood of Prospect Lefferts Gardens.
But her work has taken on new resonance in the weeks since the coronavirus pandemic has hit the city, with her messages reflecting the shared anxieties of New Yorkers as well as offering a sense of hope during this difficult period.
"On a regular day without a world pandemic, maybe my work speaks to a hundred people with the same emotion that day," she said. "Right now, because we're all experiencing very similar things on a daily basis and our minds are occupied with the same thoughts, I feel that my work suddenly became a hundred times more relatable."
Erenthal, a former member of an ultra-Orthodox community, has put up pieces with a wide range of messages in the last two months, as you can see in the photos up above and on her Instagram. Some serve as memorials for first responders or people who have died, some are optimistic, empathic slogans, and some are commentary on struggling with loneliness due to social isolation (like the "imaginary quarantine partner" mattress). She's created pieces for the windows of stores in her neighborhood, including Awesome Brooklyn in Prospect Lefferts Gardens and a local pet store.
After talking to a woman in a park a couple of weeks ago, who told Erenthal she lived alone and she was the first person she had a real-life conversation with in over a month, she's started occasionally sitting in Prospect Park on the weekend next to a sign offering to speak to people. "I went back last Sunday and did it for three hours. There was a line of people waiting to talk to me, a social distant line, so people were waiting quite far away for an opportunity," she said.
"A lot of people need to talk," she added. "A lot of people tell me that they live alone. I literally see people stopping in their tracks while running. And it's just been very interesting to see the power of human connection and the power of art and giving people opportunities to open up and to know that they're not alone."
Erenthal, who is living alone during the quarantine, got sick herself in March; she said her doctor suspects she had COVID-19, though she never officially got tested. "When the virus started, I wasn't sure if I was going to continue doing it because I wasn't sure if it was safe. So I took a break for a while, but also I was sick so I needed to take a break."
"Art is my healing, art is my therapy," Erenthal added. "It's my go-to for anything I'm dealing with. So that's the reason I continue doing this, despite it being dangerous—I'm touching garbage, obviously I've been extremely cautious about everything I touch and how much I sanitize and all that stuff. But it's very important to me, I can't not do it. I can't imagine what I would do with myself right now, how I would manage mentally if not for this."
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COVID-19
coronavirus
street art
Sara Erenthal
art
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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