Obscura Gallery is thrilled to present Parallel Playground, a collaborative photo-based exhibition with Obscura Gallery Apache artist Douglas Miles and New York City guest artist Al Díaz. San Carlos Apache-Akimel O’odham artist Douglas Miles’s artistic work is rooted in Apache history and deeply engaged with the world of contemporary pop culture. Al Díaz is an American urban artist best known for being among the first generation of graffiti writers in New York City and for co-creating the graffiti campaign SAMO© with Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1978. Each of these artists combine words, photographs, and painting in their art work, and their unique styles intersect with their deep passion for social justice within their own communities.

Douglas Miles developed and founded Apache Skateboards in 2002, one of the earlier skateboard companies to blend fine art, pop culture, and sport by bringing the reservation community together through these avenues. Miles’ latest photographic series, Res Skate Demo, speaks on lineage and legacy within this community whose roots are deeply embedded across the Americas.

Since its original inception, the Apache Skateboard program has expanded to include the arts, education, political awareness and empowerment by connecting mainstream skateboard culture with contemporary Native life. Many of the skateboard designs depict Apache warriors and the youth of the San Carlos Apache reservation on skateboard decks. In June 2024, Zumiez, the specialty retailer of action sports related apparel, footwear, equipment and accessories began carrying Apache Skateboards products in select stores across the country.

My photography blends raw and present elements from our past to point out the hardships and the joy of being Native all at once, now. The terror, triumph, turmoil and beauty of what we’ve seen, endured and overcome is what these photos are about now. We don’t distance ourselves from the past because it’s what made us who we are today and we always want to live up to the greatness of those that have come before us. – Douglas Miles

By appropriating online early images of Apache Native Americans and juxtaposing them with his own contemporary photographs of his community with his street mural graphics, Douglas brings us from the past to the present day in a two dimensional image but creating a three dimensional reality. The contrast of his sharp contemporary imagery made with his hand-held smart phone, alongside often pixelated images found online of early Native American portraits, the viewer is transported through time both viscerally and literally.

Douglas Miles (b. 1963) is a multi-faceted artist working as a designer, filmmaker, muralist and photographer who blends Native history with political resistance. His work encourages reflection on how art can foster community-building and promote pride and well-being, especially among young Native people.

Miles enjoys collaboration with other artists in almost all forms of his work and has worked with such artists as actor and author Ethan Hawke and artist Greg Ruth on a New York Times bestseller graphic novel, Indeh: A Story of the Apache Wars. He’s also collaborated with actress and artist LivÁndrea Knoki on a selection of photographs with text and image, shown virtually in 2020 at Obscura Gallery. Miles’ work has been exhibited at Princeton University; Columbia University; Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis; the Peabody Essex Museum; Salem, Massachusetts; the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History; and the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum in Santa Fe. In 2017 he was a resident artist at the San Francisco De Young Museum. The series, “The Blessing” was on view during a solo exhibition at the Arizona Capitol Museum in 2018.

Al Díaz’s career spans five decades. Born and raised Puerto Rican in New York City, by age 15 he was an influential first-generation subway graffiti artist known as “BOMB-ONE.” His friendship and artistic collaboration with high school schoolmate Jean-Michel Basquiat on SAMO©, (a late 70s Avant-garde graffiti tag project) has beennoted often in contemporary art history. Díaz later contributed percussion to numerous musical recordings and performances, including Basquiat’s historic 1983 record, “Beat Bop,” (considered to be one of the earliest hip-hop albums).

Díaz is sought-after as an expert of New York City counterculture art. He appears often in publications, as a highlighted speaker for a variety of panel discussions at universities and museums (including Smithsonian Institution, the Brooklyn Museum, The New School and Christie’s Education), and has been featured in several films, including Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat, BBC’s American Masters — Basquiat: Rage to Riches and Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child.

Díaz’ current creative practice in Brooklyn includes gathering the standard “WET PAINT” signage used throughout the NYC MTA, and reconstructing them to create clever, poignant anagrams in various mixed media and public art formats. His work is shown and privately collected internationally.

In 2018, Diaz authored SAMO©…SINCE 1978, an in-depth, color illustrated history of the street art legacy that he began with Basquiat in the late 70s. A notebook that Díaz made with Basquiat in his teens is currently held in the collection of the Yale University Beinecke Library.