16 Facts About Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada

Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada was born in Cuba on February 5,1966, and emigrated with his family to the United States in 1970.

Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada predominantly creates work in urban spaces on a large scale.

Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada was a founding member of the early 1990s New York culture jamming movement, working first with the group Artfux and later with the Cicada Corps of Artists.

In 2002, Rodriguez-Gerada moved to Barcelona, where he worked on his ephemeral charcoal drawings, which comprise his Identity Series.

Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada then developed the Terrestrial Series; it is a series of ephemeral earthworks.

Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada immigrated with his family from Cuba to the United States in 1970 to settle in North Plainfield, New Jersey.

Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada studied at Jersey City State College where he met the future members of Artfux.

Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada then replaced the standard Surgeon General's warning with his own messages: "Struggle General's warning: Black and Latinos are the prime scapegoats for illegal drugs, and the prime target for legal ones".

Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada soon extended his critiques beyond tobacco and alcohol ads to include rampant ad bombardment and commercialism in general.

In 1997, when Klein interviewed Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada, he said that he started to alter street signs as well.

In 2002, around the time that Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada moved to Barcelona, he began to create large charcoal portrait drawings of anonymous locals.

Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada created a composite identity based on 100 faces in the demographics of that area in 2009.

Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada stated that he hoped to use the project to create monumental sculptures as well as murals that "mirror each location's idiosyncrasy and population".

Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada's first terrestrial work was Expectation, which is an ephemeral sand portrait of Barack Obama on a beachfront in Barcelona, Spain.

Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada said that having it made from sand and gravel was like making a giant mandala to pray for change but alludes to how the hope could fade away; the sand eventually did erode away.

Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada chose a girl named Gal-la who lives in the Delta del Ebro and created this icon in her likeness: "an icon to symbolize all the reasons for the world to act today".