Whose Art is it Anyway?

This question has been asked over and over again, these words have titled essays, articles and talks including the panel I was on at Jamaica Flux 8 for the opening day. So what did this mean about my art? This was my first public art piece. There was something exciting about having 20 phone booth windows with posters of art rather than posters of advertisement. I thought about what it means to create public art, is it something to teach, entertain, make a statement, give a new perspective? Is it my art or the community's art in the end?

In my proposal for this show I talked about how I would reflect the multiple cultures of the neighborhood of Jamaica, Queens through cartographic imagery, patterns, symbols, details of landscapes that would speak of the different countries represented in this community. I thought about the history of Queens and through research found the Queens Flag, which lead me to use the colors from the flag (along with other imagery like the tulip and the white rose, representing The Netherlands & Queens, respectively) as my palette. I thought about the countries and how to overlap them and the forms that would produce once they were interlinked. I thought about composition leading me to go back to traditional Japanese paintings because their compositions are strong, they flow, they lead the eye through the story being told. Though I do not generally intellectualize or plan every step in my work before or while creating them, this felt different, this was for this community and to be in poster form, I had to take those aspects into account. Having pondered deeply on every part of the piece and having poured intentional meaning into it, in the end I believed that it was my art but as a gift to this multicultural community.

The day of the opening, I walked quickly out of the train, nervous and excited, would the community notice them? would they like them? and more importantly would the posters be up? JCAL had to hand over the posters to the phone booth company which in turn passed it to the workers who put them up in whatever booths had an available window to use (normally it costs about $500 a week for 1 window in 1 phone booth in that neighborhood, but they were donated for the show) along Jamaica Blvd.
I turn the corner onto the blvd. and.... Yes! there it is, the poster is up, the colors were bright and able to compete with the myriad of shops and advertisements telling you to buy buy buy! And then suddenly, the question I had asked myself over and over, alone in my studio was answered, it was loud and without any doubt.... every single poster of the 20 that dotted the streets over a 10 block radius, was hung upside down....
there was a decision made about which side was up and it was not the same decision as I had made, it was no longer my art, it was clearly the community's art.