#1384 - Mi amor, My love

Sobre: The inspiration is the love I have for the jaguars, one of my favorite of all

Raul's Bio': Hektad was raised in the Bronx, NY. Hektad started in 1981 at age of 12, hitting it hard in the Graffiti culture nonstop until 1999. The moniker, Hektad manifest as a merging of the tag HEK and the acronym TAD for ‘They Always Destroy’ which was the name of Hektad’s first teenage crew, established in 1984. Hektad remembers the early days when the, self-taught artists dropped works across the city and nobody seemed to care and certainly nobody seemed to value their work. In 1986 Hektad graduated from the High School of Art and Design east Midtown location at 1075 Second Avenue. It was an underfunded public school that seeded the cultural life of NYC generation after generation. In Hektad’s day, graffiti writers like Tracy168, Fab Five Freddy, George Lee Quiñones, Lady Pink, and Mare139 all graced the halls and tagged the walls of HSAD.

Hektad grew up during the storied era of the emergence of graffiti art. From its earliest expressions, the culture of graffiti art has sparked competitive infamy amongst young artists inspired to make their mark on their stomping grounds. The artists of New York City identified strongly with the city’s rich culture, coming from a deep sense of belonging and a recognition of the significance of belonging and of home. During the 1980s, New York graffiti artists’ reputations grew through tagging subway cars, which exposed their work to audiences far beyond the pieces they painted in their own neighborhoods. When city law enforcement curbed the tagging of trains, artists returned to the walls with more zeal and inspiration. Locations for graffiti art were lost as old industrial spaces were demolished due to city planning changes and gentrification, but in recent city development trends, this negation has declined. Developers have begun to recognize the value of street art: Graffiti and tagging have been absorbed into the mainstream aesthetic. Public artworks are celebrated and commissioned; murals serve to recognize and validate this important subculture and an artistic genre.

Inspiração: The inspiration is the love I have for the jaguars, one of my favorite of all