Over the past year, Zohran Mamdani has become a growing force in New York City’s political and cultural ecosystem, uniting people across business sectors, boroughs, neighborhoods, and artistic circles. On Tuesday, November 4, Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, made history: New York City’s first Muslim mayor and the youngest mayor-elect in a century. His campaign did not trade in metaphors or aspirations. It addressed the conditions New Yorkers are trying to live in: rent that wipes out paychecks, inflation that makes grocery shopping a difficult decision, daylight ICE raids and a government shutdown that cut off SNAP benefits for more than 40 million Americans.
Some of Mamdani’s proposals may seem radical if one does not have to choose between rent, food and transportation. There is free public transit. Rent stabilization which actually stabilizes housing costs. Taxing the rich who use New York as a cultural playground run by everyone else’s labor. These are not ideological fantasies. They are realistic responses to whether a city can support working-class people, including artists.
It is also important that Mamdani’s relationship with culture is direct, lived in and familial. his mother, Meera NairShaping international cinema for over four decades, building film infrastructure outside of Hollywood and mentoring generations of artists. his wife, Rama DuwajiA working illustrator navigating delayed shipments, healthcare intricacies, rising rents and freelance volatility. Mamdani’s politics does not envisage cultural labor from the outside. They come from within its economic and psychological realities.
“When I talk about the importance of making the most expensive city in the United States affordable, it’s a commitment to artists,” Mamdani said recently. “We can’t have art if an artist can’t afford rent. We can’t have art if that same artist can’t afford child care. We can’t have art if an artist can’t find $2.90 to get on the bus. Art, at its core, can’t be a luxury for the few.”
Many in the art world have understood its significance. Others reacted with horror. One of the most strongly negative responses came from the Instagram account @jerrygogosian. In an IG story posted on November 6, the account said: “Mamdani is bad for the art world. You complain enough when you have to split a painting fifty-fifty with your dealer. Wait until you get that socialist tax up.”
It is not intended as satire, irony, performance or provocation. It was presented as plain truth. And when pushback came, instead of backing down, clarifying or reconsidering, Jerry doubled down. He then posted a video Richard Spencer—a known neo-Nazi—in an attempt to defend his position by arguing “free speech” in his story. It was not a commentary on fascism. It was the trend of fascist propaganda to serve a point about taxation. It was a normalization of rhetoric that has historically been used to suppress artists, not to protect them.
It is also relevant to note that Jerry does not currently live in New York. The critique was not only wrong—it was geographically and materially removed from the state of the city for which he claimed to be speaking.
And those conditions are real. I teach in the CUNY system. I work as an art journalist and critic. I navigate rigor, specificity, high rents, and shrinking institutional support with my students, peers, and colleagues. The degradation of free expression does not show as speech. It shows as pressure. It shapes how I discuss war, occupation, protest and state power in a classroom. Over the past year and a half, my LinkedIn profile has led to Homeland Security searches as a result of my reporting on student protests and labor organizing efforts against the war in Gaza. that This is what it looks like when the expression is actually threatened.
That’s why it seems deeply perplexing that “free speech” is invoked to protect the comfort of the wealthy while those who actually speak, teach, organize, and create within the institutions bear the risk.
The history of contemporary art in New York is inextricable from affordability, contiguity, and survival. Abstract expressionism in cheap art lofts. Queer nightlife and performances in bars held together with borrowed money. Developers around street art, punk and independent film haven’t yet taken notice. Culture requires time, proximity, and the ability to persist long enough to create new forms.
When rents rise, when wages stagnate, when transit becomes inaccessible, when cultural labor is treated as an input rather than a livelihood, culture does not collapse. It is transferred. It goes away. If taxing billionaires threatens some version of the art world, then the art world was never about art. It was an investment strategy with wall labels. It was marketed as donor maintenance aesthetic judgment.
Mamdani is not a threat to culture or artists. He threatens the idea that rich people are the natural custodians of culture and that artists have an inherent right to output. Those who create culture have already been subsidizing the city for decades. Now those who benefit from culture can be asked to contribute. If it feels like a fall, it’s just a fall of a myth. Culture does not end here. This is the beginning of his repair.
