Ronny Quevedo

The bodega storefront is a cultural marker, an urban landmark. I look at its typography and design the way heraldry is used to mark families and territories. I see links between that system of coding and bodega signage. I include its décor and advertisements to represent a genealogy of diasporic and migrant communities that influence New York City and my own identity.

From colloquial to commercial, language to iconography my interest is in creating images that mark an uncovered history, a personal lineage of migration and the legacy of power struggle. The transformation of language and cultural objects into something organic and malleable is essential to the recognition of vernacular as historical record.

Stemming from the impact of gentrification, these concepts open a dialogue into locality, physical space and collective memory. The effects of displacement, offer a grounded concern in materiality and the shifting of value.