‘The Reflective Black Body’ – Mural by Layqa Nuna Yawar in Newark, New Jersey

Street Artist Layqa Nuna Yawar

By Layqa Nuna Yawar (also known as Lenny Correa) in Newark, New Jersey.

BIO: Layqa Nuna Yawar (b. Cuenca, Ecuador, 1984) is a public artist and multidisciplinary storyteller based in the unceded lands of the Lenni-Lenape: current day Newark, NJ. His work is best known for large scale community-based murals, intricate portrait paintings and multimedia projects that center the complex narratives of immigrant, black, indigenous and subaltern populations. His artwork aims to disrupt established semiotic systems and reimagine them in service of shared liberation and a better future. Layqa’s name is an invention that honors and reclaims the Kichwa-Kañari side of his mixed descent. His praxis is driven by this act of reclaiming as well as the inherent rupture and repair of the immigrant experience. His work exists at the intersection between migrant alienation and belonging, cross-cultural identity and decolonization, and between private and public space.