See the diverse faces of South Brooklyn, memorialized in a new art exhibition

NEW YORK – Two hundred portraits of Brooklyn citizens now hold in a gallery in Industry City. If you glance carefully, chances are you’ll simply spot any person you realize. 

“Oh, he lives in my neighborhood,” says Dina Rabiner, Vice President for Economic Development and Strategic Partnerships at the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. 

Rabiner’s portrait, quantity 195, is a component of the new exhibition referred to as “We Are South Brooklyn,” exhibited via The Free Portrait Project.

“It’s a snapshot in time and it really is capturing the wealth of South Brooklyn, all the different people and types and backgrounds and histories,” Rabiner says.

Jonathan Aguilar, a Sunset Park local, says he sought after to be section of the undertaking once he heard about it. 

“I never thought I would ever have a portrait of myself in an art exhibit, and that’s why I jumped on the opportunity, even though it’s not something I would normally do,” he explains. 

The artist in the back of the brush, Kensington resident Rusty Zimmerman, created The Free Portrait Project in 2015 as a method to give a boost to his craft and produce neighbors in combination. 

“It’s also an effort to give something to people, whether they can afford an oil painted portrait from life or not, regardless of stature or notability, to give something that was historically just reserved for fancy people to everyone,” Zimmerman tells CBS 2’s Hannah Kliger. 

During portrait sittings, he additionally recorded other people’s lifestyles tales, interviews that at the moment are section of an oral historical past accompanying every portray. 

The undertaking culminates in a parade on Saturday via Sunset Park, very similar to one Zimmerman arranged for a undertaking like this in Crown Heights in 2016. All 200 other people, accompanied via a marching band, will stroll via the streets to the new gallery. Their faces hold facet via facet, however now they are in any case assembly in individual. 

“I oftentimes tell everyone that this entire project is just an elaborate ruse to trick people into saying hello to one another. And I’m certainly a lot richer for having met these 200 neighbors of mine,” Zimmerman says. 

Saturday can be the professional opening of the exhibition, which is unfastened to the public and can run till March twenty fifth. After that, the members will have the ability to take their portraits house, and the oral histories will probably be donated to the Brooklyn Public Library’s Center for Brooklyn History.

“We all get our portrait so maybe it’ll be passed down. So my, you know, grandkids or great grandkids, will say, ‘oh this is what my family looked like,'” Rabiner says with a snicker.