Dramatic perch for Oakland photographer’s collage.
Square displays photographer’s work atop tech company’s Oakland headquarters
OAKLAND >> A collage created by photographer Cinque Mubarak depicting a Black family in Oakland now has a lofty and dramatic perch on a billboard that tech company Square installed atop its downtown Oakland offices.
Located on the roofline of Uptown Station, the display features two billboards: One is the Cinque Mubarak created photo collage and the directly adjacent billboard is a “Black Lives Matter” sign that was designed by Tyisha Shaia, a Square office manager and Black Square Association global co-chair.
“It’s amazing to have my work displayed this way,” Mubarak said. “I feel very lucky and blessed. It is kind of a milestone, being from Oakland. I passed that building my entire life. It’s really cool.”
The collage that Mubarak created shows a Black family, including a child, watching a protest in West Oakland in 2017.
Square, a financial services tech firm, said it installed the billboards on top of its office building at Uptown Station to demonstrate its alliance with the East Bay’s communities.
“The billboards are in solidarity with the community and particularly with the Black community,” said Ahmed Ali Bob, Square community affairs lead. “It’s a way to focus on eliminating systemic racism. This is not really about Square.”
The billboards were installed on the Telegraph Avenue side of Uptown Station, which is at 1955 Broadway, but also fronts on Telegraph and Thomas L. Berkley Way.
“For me, the photograph is an ode to Oakland,” Mubarak said. “I wanted people to see the humanity in people, the humanity in African Americans.”
The family photo in the collage shows the child up close to the camera looking straight at the lens.
“You see a child and their family just enjoying themselves at their house,” Mubarak said. “They were watching a protest that was passing their house. There was a genuine look in the boy’s eyes. That reminded me of my own family in a way.”
Mubarak believes that the photo collage can serve as a reminder of the complexity and the richness of Black lives. In a post distributed by Square entitled “Uptown Station Social Justice Billboards,” Mubarak provided further elaboration about the work.
“I was on a mission to capture the
full picture of our experience: the good, the bad, and the ephemeral,” Mubarak stated in the Square post. “In the boy’s eyes, I saw a look of wisdom beyond his years. It’s like I could see my reflection in him and them. Like ‘Yo that’s me.’ It’s a piece about home, it is a piece about Oakland.”
Founded in 2009, Square has used its technology to revolutionize how financial services are offered and how merchants conduct their transactions. Over the 12 months that ended in September 2020, Square earned $310.1 million in profits and generated $7.65 billion in revenue.
Square’s most visible product is an increasingly ubiquitous square-shaped card reader that enables transactions to be conducted at virtually any location that can connect to the internet.
“At Square, we believe our purpose of economic empowerment is rooted in equality,” the company stated in the post that explained the purpose of the social justice billboards at its downtown Oakland office building.
The fintech company believes it has created a more level playing field among merchants, large and small. Square also believes a level playing field is possible regarding social justice issues.
“We see these billboards as a way to show solidarity with the local community and showcase local artists at the same time,” Ali Bob said. “One of the great things about the billboards is the angle of them and the height of our building.”
The idea is to make the billboards as visible as possible, Ali Bob added.
“We want to be sure that Oaklanders passing through the downtown, going to work, going to their favorite restaurant, or a nightspot, or the theater, can see this and see our solidarity with the Black community,” Ali Bob said.
The display of the billboards wasn’t merely a spur-of-the-moment decision for Square, the company said.
“We have been thinking about how to do this right for years,” Ali Bob said. “We want to be very thoughtful regarding our presence in Oakland. We are a member of the community, not just a community partner. We want to showcase diversity as much as possible. We want to provide as much of an opportunity we can for Oakland artists to be paid.”
Tyisha Shaia, the Square employee who designed the Black Lives Matter artwork that’s now on the Uptown Station building, said the billboard extends the work that has been done by Square to bolster social justice through investments, donations, and community work.
“It was exciting to be a part of this project that continues to show that Square means it when we say Black Lives Matter,” Shaia said in a Square post. “Putting up this billboard created by Black artists with design input from Black employees is just another example of Square showing our dedication.”
For Mubarak, who has been a photographer for about five years, the billboard paints a “genuine” and “beautiful” picture of Oakland from all perspectives. It’s a picture he hopes the photo subjects will enjoy.
“The main thing I’m excited for is that the little boy in the picture will hopefully see himself up there,” Mubarak said. “That might encourage some empowerment.”