The Underbelly Project is an illegal street art exhibition happening now, which snakes its way underneath the streets of New York, starting in an abandoned subway station. However, the exact location of the works remain undisclosed and only a handful of people have seen the work of the 103 artists involved.
Jasper Rees from The New York Times writes:
“The show’s curators, street artists themselves, unveiled the project for a single night, leading this reporter on a two-and-a-half hour tour. Determined to protect their secrecy, they offered the tour on condition that no details that might help identify the site be published, not even a description of the equipment they used to get in and out. And since they were (and remain) seriously concerned about the threat of prosecution, they agreed only to the use of street-artist pseudonyms.”
So... is it really an exhibition if the public don't have access, if there is no exhibition attendees?
Rees talks to 2 of the artists and says:
In recent years as the vogue for street art has led to “anything that could possibly appreciate in value being ripped off the street by those looking to cash in,” the old sense of adventure and punk-rock energy has faded. The change isn’t all bad, he said: the runaway market for stars like Banksy has had a nice trickle-down effect for artists like him. But he said he feels strongly that something fundamental has been lost. PAC and Workhorse saw the Underbelly Project as a way to recapture that feeling and evade the whims of the marketplace. Workhorse called it “an eternal show without a crowd.”
The New York Times
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