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Bronx Artist Asks Visitors to Share Their 'Sites of Struggle' On NYC Map

By Eddie Small | October 2, 2015 4:40pm | Updated on October 4, 2015 8:14pm
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A "Sites of Struggle" map is part of the Bronx Museum's Young Lords exhibit.
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DNAinfo/Eddie Small

CONCOURSE — A Bronx artist wants to hear about your struggles.

Artist Hatuey Ramos Fermín has set up an interactive map of the city as part of the Bronx Museum of the Arts' exhibit on the Young Lords Organization that asks visitors to write down something they are struggling with on a small paper flag and then place the flag in the corresponding location on the map.

"It doesn’t have to be exactly your place where you live," said Fermín. "Maybe it’s where you’re from in the city, or it’s a struggle that pertains to that specific borough."

Most of the flags are in The Bronx so far, which could be due to how many people from The Bronx have come to see the exhibit, according to Ramos.

Struggles that people wrote down for the borough include environmental concerns ("Stop FreshDirect" and "Stop NYPA Power Plants"), economic concerns ("gentrification" and "empowering the underserved") and personal concerns ("have fun").

A few visitors also wrote down people's specific names, which Fermín said he found surprising and possibly indicative of struggles the author was having with that person.

"It’s an open-ended invitation, so people can map what struggle means to them," he said. "They’re invited to add their own meaning to that."

The Young Lords were a radical group of social activists founded in the 1960s by young Puerto Ricans who demanded housing, police, employment, education and health care reform, according to the Bronx Museum.

In addition to the map, the museum's exhibit on them also includes a reconstruction of the group's Bronx office and an installation dedicated to women in the organization.

The map is meant to show how issues that the Young Lords fought for, such as social justice and racial equality, are still very relevant today, according to Fermín.

"I hope that it connects to today's struggles. They’re all more or less similar," he said. "They might not look the same, but they might be similar to the ones you faced 40, 50 years ago."

The map will be up until the Young Lords exhibit comes down on Oct. 18, and Fermín said he was very pleased with the response it had received so far.

"I didn’t know if people were actually going to do it, first of all," he said, "but it’s been great to see people walking through and reading and taking careful notice and writing thoughtful comments. That’s been great."

"You never know with something like this how’s it going to work, if it’s going to work or not," he continued, "but it seems like people are into it."

The Bronx Museum of the Arts is located at 1040 Grand Concourse. Check their website for the hours of operations.