Ed Eisenberg

Edward Eisenberg brought an unflagging energy to the arena of public art activism that began with the artists collective, Political Art Documentation and Distribution (PAD/D), in 1980 and continued with his anti-gentrification street art on the Lower East Side in 1983 and 1984. He was also not only a member of Gay Youth in the 1970s, but also the Gay Activists Alliance.

In 1988 he conceived and directed GROUNDWORK, a city-wide street-stencil project protesting nuclear battleships on Staten Island that noted in each street-stencil the exact distance from these nuclear warships. He was also involved in art projects the documented and protested the ongoing gentrification of the Lower East Side.

He went on to become a core member of the artist's collective, REPOhistory, a multi-ethnic group of visual and performance artists, writers, filmmakers, and historians, founded in New York City in 1989. The group took its name from the concept of "repossessing history." Its purpose was to retrieve, relocate and document absent historical narratives at specific sites in New York City, through public installations, performances, educational activities, printed matter and other visual media. REPOhistory sought to question how history is constructed and insert the stories of peoples and events which have been omitted. Their work addressed historical issues of colonialism, race, gender, and class in a context relevant to current histories.