Floyd protest art featured in Phoenix
Displayed for first time outside of Minnesota
PHOENIX — For months after George Floyd was killed by police in May 2020, people from around the world traveled to the site of his murder in Minneapolis and left signs, paintings and poems to memorialize the man whose death reignited a movement against systemic racism.
Now hundreds of those artifacts are on display for the first time outside of Minnesota, giving viewers elsewhere the chance to engage with the emotionally raw protest art and mourn Floyd, as well as other Black Americans killed by police.
“It’s different than seeing it on
TV,” said Leah Hall of Phoenix, who brought her two young children to the exhibit that opened this month at the Arizona State University Art Museum. “It’s an important part of history that they are not learning in school,” Hall said.
“Twin Flames: The George Floyd Uprising from Minneapolis to Phoenix” features about 500 artifacts that protesters and mourners left at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, where Floyd was killed. It is the largest collection of work from the intersection that has been on public display.
Paintings of Floyd and poems about him written on poster boards stand on easels throughout the exhibit. Signs made with paper plates and reused cardboard that say “Justice 4 Floyd” and “Enough is Enough” cover the walls.
The heavy themes of the words and images on display are contrasted by arrangements of fake flowers and flickering, battery-powered, white candles evoking the vigil held in Minneapolis after his death.
What’s on display in Phoenix is just a fraction of the thousands of artifacts under the care of the George Floyd Global Memorial, an organization that also tends to the living memorial at the intersection where he died and which remains closed off to traffic.
Many of the artifacts appear to have been written or drawn in a hurry. This conveys the urgency with which people felt the need to express their anger and grief after watching eyewitness video that captured the moment before he died, said Jeanelle Austin, director of the George Floyd Global Memorial.
Some recent visitors to the exhibit were moved to tears.
The organizers of the exhibit say their goal was to create a space for understanding and civil discourse, and potentially stimulate collective action against police violence and other systemic inequities in the U.S.
The exhibit draws direct parallels between Minneapolis and Phoenix, where a Black man named Dion Johnson was fatally shot by an Arizona state trooper the same day that Floyd was murdered. The George Floyd Global Memorial is hopeful of bringing the exhibit to other cities after it leaves Phoenix in July, but there are no plans yet.