MTA Arts & Design

3rd Avenue-149th Street

José Ortega

Una Raza, Un Mundo, Universo (One Race, One World, One Universe), 1996

Ceramic mosaic on platform walls

Jose Ortega created a series of mosaic panels inspired by the busy circle of streets above the 149th Street station, referred to locally as "the Hub." Ortega uses circular forms to invoke universal themes and creates recognizable imagery within an organic and abstract web of patterns. "The circle is a powerful symbol," he says. "It connotes infinity, implies wholeness. It has no beginning and no end." His brightly colored murals focus on three circular images: "the sun as the provider of energy and the center of our universe, the earth as the sustainer of our humanly developed and natural worlds, and the face as the translator, both receptor and interpreter of the human and natural worlds."