Gaia
151 Newark Ave
Jersey City NJ
2016

This mural entitled Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange and a Lenape Indian by mural artist Gaia on Christopher Columbus Drive.

Gaia is a New York City native that is on the list of Forbes 30 under 30 list in Art and Style. He became one of the most famous street artists in Baltimore before graduating college due to a pop-up street art show through Ad Hoc Art in Brooklyn and his early work at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
The mural on Newark Ave actually covered over a mural that was once the largest in the country, painted in the mid-1990s by Franc Palaia and his team. Even though the mural was fading and peeling, it sparked controversy with the media which is when the Jersey City Mural Arts Program commissioned Gaia to give the mural a new life.

The white male in the mural is one of the colonists that established New Amsterdam, which includes part of New Jersey. The other figure is a Lenape native, which is a tribe that used to live in present day New Jersey. Gaia’s main focus in a lot of his work is the use of “…animal imagery to underscore his interest in bringing nature to urban landscapes” which he incorporates into this mural with the use of flowers reminiscent of William Heda, a dutch artist.

Original mural was of the Statue of Liberty.