Reading the Streets: Aiko and the Younity Collective

Aiko at Williamsburg Music Center, New York City. Photo by Ilana Novick

NEW YORK – I first spotted the woman with the saxophone after walking the Williamsburg Bridge. She had curly hot pink hair and an off the shoulder pastel blue dress, and the joy she took in playing the sax was palpable from a block away, though unfortunately I couldn’t hear anything, as she’s a stencil that exists only on a mural outside of the Williamsburg Music Center on S. Fifth Street.

She’s playing the saxophone on a bed of black and white flowers, with matching butterflies and yellow stars floating out of the saxophone, as if her music could conjure life. The stencil is in shades of blue, pink and yellow pastels, balanced with black and white outlines that forced me to rethink my perceptions of these shades as the wallflower of colors.

The woman was created by street artist Aiko and is her biggest stencil yet. She collaborated with the Younity Collective, an all-female street art collective to create the mural as a gift to the community living next to the Williamsburg Bridge.

Aiko’s stencil pays tribute to the Williamsburg Music Center, a studio and live music venue that frequently hosts jazz.

The mural also includes pieces by other Younity Collective members including former Reading the Streets subject Toofly (she of the woman with the electric green hair at Rooftop Legends). The neighborhood and the WMC are lucky to have all of them.