Taylor Swift may have sung, "Welcome to New York," but not everyone is welcoming her into the city with open arms.
The Manhattan clothing boutique La Petite Mort commissioned famous graffiti artist Antonio Garcia, who's better known as Chico, to create a mural expressing their thoughts on Swift's new position as New York City's Global Welcome Ambassador. Let's just say the mural doesn't give as warm of a welcome to Swift as she might have hoped.
The mural is painted on a gate at 37 Orchard St., the location of La Petite Mort, a shop that sells vintage clothing from the 1980s and 1990s. The work features a giant black-and-white painting of Swift's face with red hearts surrounding it. There's a black-and-white New York City skyline behind her, along with the words "RIP Taylor Swift."
Ouch. That seems like a pretty bleak message to send Swift, doesn't it? However, the mural is intended to be more of a comment "on the whitewashing and gentrification" of the city rather than an attack on Swift.
"While we realize and appreciate that New York is ever changing, when a starving artist once representative of the New York spirit is replaced by the modern 19 million dollar condo owner who drinks lattes we have to shake our heads," La Petite Mort said in a statement. "While Taylor Swift is alive and well, and we wish her no harm, she did kill off yet another piece of that broken New York spirit. The idea of her being our spokesperson is DEAD and we expressed that through a true NY artist. RIP TAYLOR SWIFT."
Those all caps are certainly intimidating. It seems kind of weird that they chose to accompany the mural with the words "RIP Taylor Swift" instead of "RIP New York," but perhaps it's more attention-grabbing this way. Either way, many people have been echoing a similar sentiment to La Petite Mort and Chico since the city named Swift its new tourism ambassador. Some thought it was wrong, offered up suggestions for better ambassadors and many were just plain confused.
But Swift has a lot of practice in shaking off the haters at this point, so I'm sure she'll be just fine.
Image: Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images
