The National Gallery of Jamaica opened last week Sunday for its monthly Last Sundays celebration. The programme (held, as the name suggests, on the last Sunday of every month) offers special features, such as performances and film screenings to art lovers, completely gratis! There were on this early afternoon guided tours for children and adults and, in the midst of all the art gazing, a scintillating performance by local singer and songwriter Aisha Davis.

The current exhibit on display was no doubt also a major draw for the gallery’s denizens. The exhibit, titled Anything with Nothing: Art from the Streets of Urban Jamaica (and which runs from May 25 to July 11) showcases local artists from the streets of the Corporate Area who’ve brought their flair for exuberant expressionism to the hushed halls of the gallery.

It’s an interesting concept. Street art is art after all and has been a staple of the city’s design aesthetic for decades; and plays a critical role in disseminating the cultural narrative of its poorer communities in particular. But this is the first time in the gallery’s history, according to Monique Barnett-Davidson, co-curator of the exhibit, that it has sought out the works of street artists. Which then prompts one to consider why, as the titular custodian of the nation’s art, this is the case.

“This really is a very vibrant part of Jamaica’s visual culture that has yet to have any presence in the gallery,” Charles Campbell, the National Gallery’s chief curator, tells us. “It seemed like a big omission that this very vital thing didn’t have any representation.”

“It’s a lot of things,” adds Barnett-Davidson, “but the community of street art and the mainstream art community have been separate.”

Of course, uncomfortable notions of class and elitism are inevitable when discussing what traditionally makes it into an art gallery (a situation the gallery’s executive director, Veerle Poupeye, directly addresses in her foreword on the exhibit). So in an attempt to give street art its due, the National Gallery commissioned 10 street artists to create pieces for the exhibit. It’s not in an attempt to popularise the genre or the artists, per se, but to, according to Barnett-Davidson, “give a comprehensive view of what [Jamaican] art is”.

The collection of works ranges from traditional oil paintings to spray-painted non-traditional materials. Rider, by artist Andrew ‘Designer Ice’ Thomas, for instance, depicts a colourfully dressed motorcyclist on an ornately decorated bike. Its recognisable iconography for anyone familiar with the types of images drawn or painted on the city’s streets to express ideas of wealth, power and status. The scene was even painted on an assemblage of cinder blocks to further simulate its urban underpinnings. Within the airy hall of the gallery, however, it was difficult to shake the notion of peering at an artifact ripped from its natural environment and sanitised for the benefit of curious outsiders — a sentiment which speaks more to the viewer’s prejudice than to the merits of the artwork.

It’s a situation the viewer may confront repeatedly throughout the exhibit. Artist Cleaver Cunningham created a series of memorial portraits on the surface of car bonnets. In two, Ananda Dean and In Memoriam, the colours are light but lurid, and tap into that peculiar sense of celebration and longing that often emanates from these memorials. But stripped from the lifeblood of the community environment, it seemed somewhat sterile laid against the tanned walls of the museum, a situation which gives rise to the exhibit’s fundamental tension — the institutionalisation of an art form whose essence sprung from its resistance to any such notion. Which brings about the peculiar existential question — can street art still claim to be street art when placed within the ivory walls of the gallery?

It’s a question that the gallery grapples with, too.

“It is a complicated endeavour,” Campbell admits. “Because the work changes when it enters the gallery space.”

But it’s that very shift, Campbell suggests, that is a part of the exhibition as well. It is not the artwork alone that’s subject to examination but so, too, is the viewer’s own engagement with notions of art.

The exhibition also features photographic documentation of the artists’ work from around the Corporate Area, which gives viewers the opportunity to compare the street art to their gallery counterpoints. It’s not as simple a dichotomy as the idea suggests, however. The memorialisation of a deceased figure is still a prominent theme. But in lieu of the glorified image of the community leader or deceased relative one might find on a community wall, there are, in the gallery, beatified images of cultural icons — Miss Lou, Bob Marley, Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Cliff, amongst others. Musicians, spiritual leaders and religious iconography loom large as well. A standout is Earl T Witter’s Shadrock, Meshach and Abednego, an oil painting depicting the faces of three Rastafarians beneath the image of Haile Selassie. The title references the Bible story of the three noble Jews condemned to execution by fire for refusing to acknowledge a false god. Protected by their god, they emerge unscathed from the furnace.

The allegorical implication of deliverance in the face of oppression resonates in Witter’s piece, certainly, but it’s also a defining characteristic in ways both subtle and unsubtle of Jamaican street art. Street art tends to flourish mostly in the poorer neighbourhoods of Kingston, where economic hardship and a sense of political disengagement are felt at its keenest. The public space becomes a readily available source for public expression — the invocation of Rastafarian iconography, the celebration of sex and the memorialisation of local dons are all part of an artistic narrative bracing against the conventions of the mainstream. The recent campaign by the police to remove some of these murals underscores the idea of street art as a form vigilantism.

Which makes the current exhibit at the National Gallery especially poignant, even if one still has questions as to what it may ultimately achieve. Will it lend so-called credibility to the form? Or bridge the worlds of the street and the gallery? Will there even be a sustained effort of promotion beyond the current exhibit?

“I think this is a path,” says Campbell.

It is impossible for the gallery to capture street art (or make any claims on its behalf) from a sampling of 10 artists.

“But it is a way of opening that door,” he adds, “and creating a dialogue.”

And that, at least, is a start.