NYC Transit Authority Bag Formerly Owned by Lady Pink

Working in the New York subway train yards, tunnels, and lay-ups, graffiti writers have traditionally been wary of the police and the subway workers.  If a writer is slow, he or she is at greater risk of getting caught. Older white graffiti writers rarely had to disguise themselves as young Black and Latino minority writers did because they more easily passed as figures of authority and sometimes came off as transit workers or cops even without the uniform. Black and Latino youth, on the other hand, were often profiled as suspects due to the prevalence of racial stereotypes about them.

Lady Pink (Sandra Fabara, b. 1964), is an Ecuadorian-American graffiti and mural artist. Her career focused on using graffiti and murals as acts of rebellion, empowering women and self-expression. Lady Pink’s name was chosen for her aesthetics because the name “Pink” is feminine and she wanted other artists to know that she was a girl. She started calling herself Lady Pink because of her love of historical romances, England, the Victorian period, and the aristocracy. Lady Pink was nicknamed the "first lady of graffiti," because she was one of the first active women in the early 1980s New York City subway graffiti subculture.