D’Stassi Art have just opened Miss Subway NYC, a landmark solo exhibition by trailblazing artist Lady Pink, one of the first women to break into New York’s graffiti scene.
In the exhibition Lady Pink returns to where it all began, the subway, with a full-scale recreation of a graffiti-covered NYC subway station inside the gallery, in the heart of Shoreditch. The exhibition features a curated selection of original works by Lady Pink, including new commissions alongside archival pieces, sketches, and ephemera from her early career.
The subway was Lady Pink’s launchpad, classroom, and battleground. “It was a boot camp for artists,” she says. It’s where she built her name, and where she first discovered graffiti at 12, gazing out the window of the elevated train to the Bronx Zoo, stunned by the sight of a full-colour train painted end to end with trees and characters. Graffiti writers risked their lives for their art. The subway trains were a moving canvas and the bloodstream of the scene. Teenagers competed for space and attention, pushing one another to go bigger, bolder, and better. They rarely visited other stations, but the trains carried their work across the city, fuelling rivalries and inspiration.
Miss Subway NYC pays tribute to that world, capturing the characters who emerged at night while she was painting: saxophonists, the elderly, the homeless. “Those were the people you made it for,” said Lady Pink. “The straphangers.”
Born in Ecuador and raised in Queens, Lady Pink (Sandra Fabara) began tagging trains at the age of 17, she exhibited at MoMA PS1 in the landmark 1981 show New York/New Wave, alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. By then, she was already a fearless force, painting entire subway cars, starring in the hip-hop film Wild Style, and leaving her mark, quite literally, on the scene. She recalls Basquiat asking her to walk barefoot across one of his paintings, so she took off her shoes and left her footprints behind.
The exhibition’s title, Miss Subway NYC, draws inspiration from the long-running New York beauty pageant Miss Subways, which ran from the 1940s through the ’70s. Posters inside train cars featured everyday women, teachers, clerks, aspiring radio producers, alongside bios about their lives and ambitions. Revived in 2020, the pageant has become a celebration of subway culture and self -expression. Today’s contestants, across all gender identities, compete not with looks but with lip-syncs, protest songs, DIY crowns, and full-blown performance art. In Miss Subway NYC, Lady Pink reimagines herself as Miss Subways 2025 in a self-portrait, wearing a sash, recreating Martha Cooper’s iconic photograph of her in a subway car.
When New York City scrapped its old subway trains, many of which Lady Pink had painted, they were dumped into the ocean to serve as artificial reefs, seen only by scuba divers. Some were bought by private collectors; others were turned into movie sets, homes, or restaurants. This strange afterlife inspired a diptych imagining a post-apocalyptic village, loosely based on Japanese architecture.
The subway was also a significant place for Lady Pink’s family, her husband, Roger Smith, is a former NYC subway operator who was fired just before retirement after the Vandal Squad identified him as a well-known graffiti writer. Their home was raided, and false charges were filed, forcing the couple to leave the city. Over the decades, she’s remained outspoken about censorship, gender bias, and survival in the art world. She continues to mentor younger women artists and create political murals, including a portrait of Kamala Harris urging people to “Vote for Freedom.”
Michael Howes and Edward Sanders, co-founders of D’Stassi Art, said:
“Lady Pink is a true icon. This exhibition is not only an honour for the gallery, but a continuation of the story we began; exploring the early rise of graffiti & street art making its way from the streets to the galleries and celebrating the pioneers who gave street art its soul. With the immersive NYC subway experience, we want to bring audiences into Lady Pink’s world and show how her legacy continues to influence the culture today.”
About the artist
Lady Pink was born in Ecuador, raised in NYC, and currently resides in the countryside north of the city. In 1979 she started writing graffiti and soon became well known as the only female capable of competing with the boys in the graffiti subculture. Pink painted subway trains from the years 1979-1985 and in 1982 had a starring role in the motion picture “Wild Style”. That role and her other significant contributions to graffiti have made her a cult figure in the hip-hop subculture. She began exhibiting paintings in galleries while still in high school, and at the age of 21 had her first solo show at the Moore College of Art. As a leading participant in the rise of graffiti-based art, Lady Pink’s canvases have entered important art collections such as those of the Whitney Museum, the MET in New York City, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and the MoMA. She has not only established herself in the fine arts world, but also the fashion world. Collaborating with Louis Vuitton, Supreme, and Lancôme, her paintings are highly prized by collectors.
Today, Lady Pink continues to create new paintings on canvas that express her unique personal vision. She also shares her 40 years of experience with teens by holding mural workshops and actively lecturing to college students throughout the world. @ladypinknyc
