EAST x WEST and beyond…

As I’m leaving to LA tomorrow to participate in the MoCA “Art In The Streets” exhibition opening there later this month,
I thought this shirt was an appropriate post on my way out the door…

Like hip hop itself, the once primarily NYC phenomenon of graffiti soon found it’s second home out in California,
after which the two coasts remained a platform for the styles and spirit that have since exploded around the world.
T-shirts were truly one of the first products to export this language in a tangible way,
becoming yet another canvas and vehicle to push the movement forward on our own terms.

This Tribal t shirt captures this essence in it’s infancy,
one of the early east x west joints before collabo’s became an industry standard.
no illustrator eps files and no slick logos or other branding,
just raw tags from a lot of now familiar heads that Tribal founder Bobby Ruiz collected at the ASR trade show one season.
I’m gonna guess this was no later than 1993 judging from the fact it still has just a plain fruit of the loom label in it too.

All these years later, from trains to walls to t-shirts to MoCA, and everything in between.,,
it will be interesting to see how the first element is represented through the blender of time in this month’s LA exhibition.