In Solidarity: Black Lives Matter

2020, Jackson Street, Seattle, WA, acrylic, spray paint, wheat paste on plywood, 150 feet wide x 12 feet

co-designed and created with Scott Méxcal, with the help of many community members. Special gratitude for the owners of the Jackson Building, Paul and Craig Murakami who invited us to create this artwork.

During the uprising of 2020, we wished to create a solidarity message and perhaps a small space of healing for the Black community. The message is flanked by a torii or Shinto gate, a portal to the divine. We include portraits of but a few of the slain community members whose names we will keep shouting and whose faces we want to shine: Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Manuel Ellis, Charleena Lyles, Sandra Bland, David McAtee. 

This mural was installed in June 2020 over boarded up shops on South Jackson St. in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District, formerly Japantown. Most C-ID businesses were compelled to board up in the wake of anti-Asian violence and rhetoric coming from the 45th president of the U.S. and his followers. The last time the entire neighborhood was boarded up was in the spring of 1942 under similar xenophobic circumstances