Woodbury House presents Outside is America, a landmark exhibition by Lee Quiñones, one of the
most influential artists to emerge from the New York City street art movement. Opening on October 18th,
it marks Quiñones’ first solo show in London in 40 years, following New Horizons at Riverside
Studios in 1985.
Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, Lee grew up in New York City, where he began painting subway car
murals in 1974. He used art as a form of social commentary to address nuclear war, poverty, racism,
and classism. His iconic Stop the Bomb double whole subway car mural (1979) confronted Cold War
politics, while his transformation of a Lower East Side handball court in 1978 into a mega mural
introduced art in the public space. It is undisputedly the first of its kind that inspired a global street art
movement. He further developed his practice in the vibrant East Village art community in the 1980s
and 1990s, among peers including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Futura, Jenny Holzer and
Martin Wong.
Advertisement for New York/New Wave at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in ArtForum. Photo by Bobby Grossman
That insistence on speaking to the times has defined his career. After many decades, Quiñones
continues to produce work that challenges injustice and amplifies overlooked voices. Outside Is
America gathers paintings, drawings, and his distinctive “tablet works,” fragments of his studio walls
inscribed with phrases, poems, paint testing bursts, and sketches. He confronts systemic violence,
misinformation, and the breakdown of political leadership on many levels.
“Art arrives at the time it deserves. A painting made twenty years ago may only make sense today.
Lee Quiñones
These works retrospectively carry forward conversations I’ve been having my whole life, about the
human condition, about our collective hypocrisy, and how we can possibly move forward together.”
Highlights of the exhibition include Red Dawn (2021), a portrait of Red Cloud, the Lakota tribe leader,
which infuses indigenous Taino iconography and borrows from the proverbrial phrase “get off my lawn”
reconfigured as “get off my dawn.” In No Strings Attached (2021), the artist depicts Public Enemy’s
Chuck D, who at first appears as a puppet under control, but on closer inspection, the strings are
severed, revealing the illusion and the artist’s knowing gaze. The work reflects on the history of
manipulation and physical displacement of marginalised communities, an introspection into one’s soul
while calling for cultural agency and self-determination.
Heart In A Hurricane (2009–2025) takes the form of a floor-based installation in which a shrivelled
American flag lies alongside a gentle portrait of the artist himself. Quiñones describes it as “a flag and
countryman in mourning, land of the slave, no wind in its sails,” a searing commentary on the state of
the nation. The exhibition also features Wildstyle Heart (1982), a drawing he made during the filming of
Wild Style — Charlie Ahearn’s pivotal film that Quinones starred in and based on his artistic trajectory
— and recently rediscovered in his archives. Its inclusion creates a vital link between the downtown
New York scene of the early 1980s and the ideas Quinones’ grapples with in his studio.
Quiñones describes America today as “a ship with a wheel but no rudder… a giant hurricane where no
one knows which way is north, south, east, or west.” His works respond to this atmosphere of
instability, using wordplay, symbolism, and figuration to question complacency and insist on
accountability.
The exhibition uses his framework as an American to explore larger historical connections between
urban centers devastated by external forces, including London. Quiñones likens the devastation of
1970s New York to the Blitz, “a city disinvested in, left to burn, yet alive with resilience,” drawing a
parallel between disillusion, fragmented communities, and the conditions that can spark powerful new
art.
With a foreword by curator Pedro Alonzo, he writes:
“Lee’s practice, as well as those of his peers, largely emerged from neighbourhoods and communities that had been devastated by red lining, disinvestment and discriminatory lending policies.”
Lexington Avenue IRT Express #5 subway train. Courtesy of artist.
Joseph Bannan, Woodbury House Partner, said:
“From the subway cars of New York to the permanent collections of the world’s most respected
museums, Lee Quiñones has continually expanded the language of contemporary art while remaining
deeply rooted in social and political commentary. Outside is America is not simply a return to London
after four decades — it is a landmark moment to reflect on a career that speaks as urgently to today’s
climate as it did in the 1970s. His evolution as an artist is extraordinary, and this exhibition offers
audiences the chance to witness both the weight of history and the vitality of an artist still pushing
boundaries. It is long overdue, and Woodbury House is honoured to bring it to London.”
Lee Quiñones, Outside is America, 20th October – 27th November, Woodbury House
About the artist
Lee Quiñones is considered the most influential artist to emerge from the New York subway art movement for his expansive body of work that is ripe with socio-political content and intricate
composition. Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico in 1960, and raised on New York’s Lower East Side,
Quiñones started painting trains in 1974, then shifted to a studio-based practice.
Quiñones has had numerous solo shows and exhibited internationally, first at Galleria Medusa in
Rome, Italy in 1979. In 1980, he had his first New York show at White Columns, ushering in an
important era as the medium of spray paint expanded from public spaces to stationary canvas works.
His work was included in the critical “Times Square Show” (1980); “Graffiti Art Success for America at
Fashion Moda” (1980); the “New York/New Wave” show at PS1 (1981); and in “Documenta #7” in
Kassel, Germany (1983). His drawings and paintings have been shown in recent years at the New
Museum of Contemporary Art (2005), El Museo del Barrio (2010), the Museum of Modern Art (2011),
the Museum of Contemporary Art Rome (2017), Seoul Museum of Art (2019), the Bronx Museum
(2019), the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (2020), the Gropius Bau (2021), The Drawing Center (2024)
and the Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies (2022). He has had solo shows at PS1:MOMA, the
Contemporary Art Center of Cincinnati, the Fun Gallery, Barbara Gladstone, Galerie Rudolf Zwirner,
Lisson Gallery, Barbara Farber, Nicole Klagsbrun, Charlie James, and James Fuentes. Quiñones’
paintings are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art,
Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Groninger
Museum, Blanton Museum of Art, and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.
Quiñones starred in Charlie Ahearn’s 1983 film “Wild Style,” which served as a visual and audio
blueprint for the burgeoning hip hop movement. He also appears in Blondie’s “Rapture” video and the
film “Downtown 81.” He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
