STREET SIGNALS Turns Urban Signage Into Gallery Dialogue at South Broadway Cultural Center
Exhibit opens March 25.
A new exhibition that reclaims and reframes the language of the street opens at South Broadway Cultural Center Gallery on March 25 with an artist reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Guest curated by Joshua Barreras, STREET SIGNALS gathers various signs – official, improvised, and vandalized – that retain traces of artistic and human intervention.
Many of the pieces include signatures, graffiti tags, and cryptic markings. These fragments of urban expression are brought from the public environment into the gallery space, prompting a dialogue about authorship, ownership, and the visual noise of the city.
Barreras is a Chicano artist born and raised on Albuquerque’s Westside to working-class parents and a 30-year veteran of the city’s street-art scene. Influenced by 1970s and 1980s graffiti, cholo culture, and pop art, he began as a tagger, developing a style rooted in Albuquerque letter structures and shaped by New York wildstyle.
Through collaborations with graffiti artists and muralists, Barreras helped create iconic productions that influenced generations of local writers. After years of sanctioned mural work, he has returned to the streets, collaborating across generations and sharing the knowledge once passed down to him. His work reflects Albuquerque’s enduring place in the global history of graffiti writing.
STREET SIGNALS will be on view through May 16. South Broadway Cultural Center Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
The South Broadway Cultural Center Gallery is a satellite gallery of the Albuquerque Museum.