Art in the streets: Washington goes big for Black Lives Matter
“It is a clapback so mighty it can be seen by satellites,” said Petula Dvorak in The Washington Post. Last Friday morning, the nation’s capital awoke to a monumental work of public art ordered by the city’s mayor and completed overnight. On the street leading to the virtual front yard of the White House, a message had been painted in bright yellow 35-foot block letters by artists, city workers, and impromptu volunteers. “Black Lives Matter,” the twoblock-long mural reads, and when the sun rose that first day, Mayor Muriel Bowser visited the site with civil rights hero John Lewis and welcomed the assembled demonstrators to the newly renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza. She was symbolically reclaiming city and public turf where four days earlier peaceful protesters were teargassed and shot with rubber bullets by federal police officers to allow President Trump to stroll out of the White House for a photo op.
Score that round to Mayor Bowser and her street mural, which was almost instantly added to Apple Maps’ satellite views of D.C., said Sebastian Smee, also in the Post. “The sign, which couldn’t be more vivid, is so close to Lafayette Square and the White House that reading it, from left to right, your eyes virtually stumble into the seat of executive power.” Copycat art immediately began appearing in other cities around the country, said Taylor Dafoe in ArtNet.com. Giant “Black Lives Matter” messages were sprayed or rolled onto major streets in Oakland and Sacramento. In Raleigh, N.C., volunteers chose the slogan
“End Racism Now” and painted it onto a street adjoining the city’s Contemporary Art Museum.
But the signaling isn’t stopping there, said Kadia Goba in BuzzFeedNews.com. In Washington, the local chapter of the Black Lives Matter movement dismissed Bowser’s mural “before the paint was even dry.” In a tweet, the group labeled it “a performative distraction,” a stunt “to appease white liberals” while Bowser ignored the group’s policychange demands. The weekend’s demonstrators quickly added their own commentary, in graffiti scribbled atop Bowser’s yellow letters, said Kevin Lewis in WJLA.com. “We Want Change Not a ‘Mural,’” said one such message. “This ‘Mural’ Ain’t Doing S---,” said another. By Friday night, Black Lives Matter had developed an even bolder response. As demonstrators danced to a joyous Beyoncé song, BLM volunteers with paint rollers added three words and an equals sign to the street painting. By morning, the giant yellow letters on 16th Street spelled out a new message: “Black Lives Matter = Defund the Police.”