First published: September 2025
Paul Deo's mural in New York’s Harlem is a tribute to Black history’s stars and heroes, an expression of spirituality, and a mainstay of the community
On the corner of New York’s 126th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard, just around the block from the world-famous Apollo Theater, is Paul Deo’s Planet Harlem, a 40-plus foot mural that he started in 2012 as an ode to his community. Part Afrofuturist cosmology, part folk-art pantheon of Black heroes, its overt novelty belies the seriousness of its creator’s intent.
adjacent to the Apollo theatre, the mural is a famous landmark which attracts tourists to the area
Compositionally, Planet Harlem lives on the surface, with a mix of flying figures, renderings of local signage, strings of theatre lights, and splashes of primary colour, all interlaced into an exuberant tapestry that calls to mind the work of Howard Finster in the 1980s. Deo uses the big-head caricature aesthetic that was iconic of the jazz and R&B concert posters from the Apollo during the big band and doo-wop eras, as well as an assemblage technique (à la Simon Rodia and the Watts Towers). The artist himself lists his influences as local mixed-media master Romare Bearden, the live-action animation sequences in 1964’s Mary Poppins film, the floats of New Orleans Mardi Gras, and the photo collages of performers that line the walls of the Apollo Theater to this day.
Mural showing gang leader Madame Sinclair, writer / activist James Baldwin, writer Lorraine Hansberry, and Michael Jackson
Deo also cites as an inspiration his aunt Auressa, a painter and art teacher who battled schizophrenia (and who drowned when he was nine years old). It was she who – a couple of years before her death – took him to the Apollo for the first time. “That moment, walking into the Apollo with her, was the seed of everything I do today. It’s where my vision was born, where the rhythm and spirit of Harlem entered my bloodstream,” he says. His aunt’s mental health issues repelled Deo from his artistic calling as a young man and finally emboldened him to embrace it as an adult.
Paul Deo talking to a group of tourists
By BRIAN CHIDESTER
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision #124.
