Black art fills Madison’s State Street after protests
What’s next for the murals on display?
A walk down Madison’s famous State Street — known for its eateries, entertainment options and retail stores — looks different now, thanks to more than a hundred murals painted by Black and brown artists from the community.
The project, which was commissioned by the City of Madison, aimed to turn the boarded-up storefronts into works of art and highlight artists who might not normally have their artwork displayed in such public spaces, said Karin Wolf, the Madison Arts program administrator.
The murals followed on the heels of the damage to storefronts that took place during the largely peaceful protests against George Floyd’s death at the hands of four white Minneapolis police officers on May 25. The peaceful daytime protests on May 30 and 31 turned into unrest at night, with store
fronts being broken into while police used tear gas and mace on the crowds.
While the protests were one form of expression of anger, frustration and sadness, so are the new murals, born out of the conversation taking place in the wake of Floyd’s death.
The tricky part about the project was how fast it had to be pulled together, Wolf said. Within 48 hours after the boards started going up, she had businesses participating, and shortly after, she put a call out to artists. Wolf said she specifically looked for artists who lost work due to the coronavirus pandemic and wanted to express feelings about what was happening in the world around them.
“They are people that had been directly impacted by racialized violence and had a desire to respond to the moment we were in,” she said. “We were looking for people who had something to say about what’s happening.”
Wolf said that the primary goal of the project was to shift the conversation about what was going on on State Street from looting and destruction to the voices and messages of the protesters. And while the murals may seem like a way to “beautify” the area, they’re actually much louder than that.
“It is beautiful, but the beauty is the beauty of resilience, and the beauty of experience,” she said.
The project resulted in 140 artists painting 112 murals on State Street and along some of the cross streets, where windows were also boarded up. Painting was wrapped up by June 14, but by that time, some store owners were already taking down the art, making it one of the shortest installations Wolf has ever worked on.
Terri Strong of Madison takes photos of several murals along State Street. Art by Tony Catteruccia and Lincoln Rust.
‘Don’t get it twisted, I’m angry’
This was Lilada Gee‘s first time doing any kind of public art, but when she was offered the opportunity, she knew she couldn’t turn it down.
“This had the potential for being something great,” she said. “My fear didn’t have a vote.”
Gee had two pieces of art along State Street, both using bright colors and depicting Black girls and women, in an effort to call attention to them. She said she felt that even with the protests going on, the death of Breonna Taylor — who was killed in March by Louisville, Kentucky, police executing a no-knock search warrant at her home — felt like it had been tacked onto the movement, instead of at the forefront.
“Often Black girls are left out of the narrative,” she said. “So given the circumstances, I wanted to make sure I had some great visual representation.”
She hopes that the representation of Black women and girls in her murals reverberates with residents of Madison and the state so that people will stand up when they see injustices taking place.
“Next time you see a Black girl in your school or community and she needs help and support, you’ll lean close to her and act accordingly,” she said.
Gee said that she’s felt more welcome on State Street with the murals there. And while she’s glad that people have come to look at the art and take in the messages, the art wasn’t placed there for the benefit of white people, but there to ask white people how they can do better.
“I was doing this to communicate a message so you could hear it better,” she said. “Don’t get it twisted, I may be painting a Black girl with a smile on her face, but I’m angry. I’m angry and this is why.”
Images of children killed by police
Shiloah Symone Coley, 21, just graduated from the University of WisconsinMadison this spring when she was asked to paint a mural on State Street. She’d done a few pieces of public art before on campus, but this was her first community piece. Her mural depicts Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley Jones, who was killed at the age of 7 when she was mistakenly shot by a SWAT team member in Detroit, and Cameron Tillman, who was killed at the age of 14 by a deputy in Houma, Louisiana.
Coley chose the two children and purposely painted them to look older than they were when they were killed, challenging viewers to think about what their lives could have been like, she said. She also chose them because she hadn’t seen or heard many people talk about their stories, and a significant amount of art was already dedicated to George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
“The idea was for folks to realize and reflect on how many lives have been lost,” she said.
For Coley, seeing the opportunity for Black and brown artists expressing themselves in such a prominent — and typically white — space was a special part of the project.
“I’d never met other Black artists in Madison,” she said. “But to actually see graffiti artists and Black artists being embraced, that was a really beautiful moment.”
‘It’s not anti-American’
Anwar Floyd-Pruitt, 42, is also a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a master’s in fine art. He created two murals on State Street, focusing on heavy use of the colors red, white and blue, as well as gold and black. The black was used to create stars, some filled in while others were only outlines, representing the number of Black people killed in the country. The gold represents the wealth that white Americans built on the backs of slaves when the country started, he said.
“People need to think about the whole story,” he said. “We have to think about our great country of ours, and where its greatness came from.”
His murals also featured what appeared to be police caution tape, with the words “black lives matter” spelled out on it, and a quote by Frederick Douglass: “The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful and virtuous.”
Floyd-Pruitt said he hopes that people who look at the murals walk away with the understanding that each individual piece has a different story to tell and that there is a call to action among them.
“I hope the entire body of work helps people think more deeply, and think across the facets of racism in America and a complacency that many people have the privilege to experience because they are not directly affected,” said Floyd-Pruitt, who is Black. “It’s not anti-American. It’s hope for what America can be, perhaps to try to hold America accountable for what its story is, but pointing the way to an America that is just.”
Where does the art go next?
Now that shops are reopening in downtown Madison, the murals are starting to come down. Instead of allowing business owners to toss away the boards, Wolf said that the city is trying to collect them and ensure that the murals will be available for people to see again. She’s just not sure what form that will take.
“We want to exhibit them, not to say this moment is dead, but to provide people the opportunity to see the (murals),” she said.
One idea is that the murals could be assembled into a gallery, where people could pay to see them, so they could spend time with the works without large crowds. Another is that the art could be given to nonprofits for display and to spark conversation. But those are only ideas, she said, and because the art doesn’t really have a home, there’s not a clear answer yet.
“It belongs to everyone and no one, but it belongs to history now,” she said.
The artists have mixed feelings on what should happen.
Floyd-Pruitt thinks that the murals should be auctioned off, and the funds can be used to support communities fighting for equality, or to pay for legal fees, he said. Or they could be put into a museum, replacing older art that has maybe been seen before.
“Sure, I love myself a Renaissance painting, but at the same time, there’s art that’s more urgent in the moment,” he said.
Coley hopes that the art will be preserved and hopes to see something like a traveling art exhibition come from it. But if the paintings are sold, she hopes the artists get a say in where the money goes after the sale. Personally, she’d like to see a community center established for homeless people in the Madison area.
“There are so many Black and brown homeless folks in Madison that people just walk by,” she said. “And they’re not critically thinking about the systems that oppress Black and indigenous folks.”
Gee thinks that the art could be displayed at the Monona Terrace Convention Center so that more people in the community would have the chance to see the art. She said the murals should be preserved, but at the same time, she doesn’t want them to be the only art by Black artists on display.
“We can’t build an altar to them and keep using them,” she said. “We need more opportunity for Black artists.”