Manny Vega makes a noise in East Harlem

If you’ve ever taken a stroll through El Barrio (‘the neighbourhood’), also known as Spanish Harlem in New York City, you will probably have encountered the work of the Bronx-born artist Manny Vega (b. 1956). For decades he has been celebrating the cultures of the African diaspora in his vibrant mosaics for the local community, drawing together global and local influences to create colourful, historically inspired pieces in the style he calls Byzantine Hip-Hop. Mosaic is a fitting medium for this artist, whose work makes connections between small details and the big picture, between individuals and the cultural and cosmic forces that shape them. ‘Byzantine Bembé’, an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, celebrates Vega’s work, with an accompanying guide to help visitors discover his murals in the surrounding area.

The exhibition is named for Vega’s two main influences: Byzantine refers to the inspiration that Vega takes from mosaics produced in the medieval period in the Byzantine Empire, but also to the complex stylistic and cultural influences on which his work draws. Bembé is a Yoruba term signifying a rhythmic pattern, a type of drum, a genre of music and a style of dance, among other things. The importance of music to Vega’s work is highlighted in the first of the exhibition’s three sections, celebrating local musicians alongside Yoruba and Catholic deities associated with music. The ability of music to channel forces greater than the individual unites it with the exhibition’s two other sections: ‘Figuras’, in which the body becomes the site for the spirit’s encounter with the world, and ‘Justicia’, which focuses on the supernatural force that connects religion and politics.

Bomba Celestial (2009–10), Manny Vega. Collection of Bobbito García. Courtesy and © Manny Vega

The exhibition opens with a room dedicated to Vega’s public works. Examples of his colourful style are represented by two female nudes in outline, which on closer inspection dissolve into smaller mosaic segments depicting natural imagery such as plants, birds and snails. These works set the tone for an exhibition which rewards close engagement and slow looking, against the background of a specially chosen soundtrack of R&B, soul and Latin jazz, including music by the New York musician Tito Puente (1923–2000). Puente, a friend of Vega’s, features in several of the works in the exhibition, represented by mosaic renderings of his album covers and a mosaic portrait in which his drumbeats explode into the air as colourful bubbles and stars.

Alongside mosaics, the exhibition includes Vega’s designs for posters and events in the East Harlem neighbourhood spanning several decades and extraordinary, large-scale ink drawings: portraits and street scenes whose bold linear style recalls the dynamic contrasts of wood engravings. In the image of Cuban-born musician Arsenio Rodriguez, smoke and fire pour out of an upstairs window in the street behind him, a reference to his song ‘Fuego en el 23’, about a fire on a streets not far from the museum’s current site. Perched on Rodriguez’s shoulder is a female figure in a wax-print dress, surrounded by hands beating drums, probably representing Oshun, the Yoruba goddess of water and sensuality. On a nearby wall, a watercolour icon of Saint Cecilia, Catholic patron saint of music and musicians, speaks to the breadth of Vega’s influences, inspired by his eclectic childhood in ‘the projects’ (subsidised apartment buildings) surrounded by Black, Latino, Jewish, white and Italian families.

Tito Puente (2009), Manny Vega. Courtesy and © Manny Vega

In accompanying videos, Vega refers to his desire to make ‘fine art in the streets’, bringing the kind of art usually found only in museums out to his community. Exhibiting such a dynamic and community-oriented artist in a gallery setting could risk sterilising his art, or make it seem rarefied. Happily, the Museum of the City of New York is one institution where this risk is at a minimum, the commitment to attracting local audiences evident in both its programming and ticketing systems. Meanwhile, the desire to capture something of Vega’s dynamism and local appeal can be found especially in the middle section, ‘Figuras’. One wall displays a series of horizontal strips with miniature portraits of visitors created during the course of the exhibition. These portraits sit alongside images of acrobats, pugilists and a gorilla with its head in its hand – a self-portrait, according to Vega, who was born in the Chinese year of the monkey.

The final section, ‘Justicia’, is the most spiritual of the three, referring to the artist’s own practice of Candomblé, a syncretic 19th-century Afro-Brazilian religion developed by enslaved peoples that combines Yoruba and Catholic beliefs. A wall of free-standing mosaics represents Shango, the spirit of justice, dance, drumming, thunder, lightning and fire. Timeless motifs such as knotwork designs and cowrie shells mingle with more contemporary imagery such as cars and men in suits, suggesting the spirit’s ongoing presence in human affairs. On the back wall is a watercolour of Changó in elemental dress, holding the scales of justice, the label recording the fact that it is on loan from Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who keeps it in her chambers.

Though small, the exhibition is a mind-expanding tour into the riches of the ‘Mannyverse’. Both intensely local and global, he is an artist who draws together disparate historical themes and builds them, like the pieces of one of his mosaics, into arresting stories for the contemporary moment.

Installation view of ‘Byzantine Bembé: New York by Manny Vega’ at the Museum of the City of New York, 2024. Photo: Brad Farwell; © Manny Vega

‘Byzantine Bembé: New York by Manny Vega’ is at the Museum of the City of New York until 8 December 2024.