Aaron M. Sprecher via AP
A mural memorializes George Floyd in Houston’s Third Ward.
Built on an abandoned railroad bed, the South Hill Recreation Trail in Ithaca, New York, is a popular spot for biking, jogging, and leisurely walks near Ithaca College. Greeting visitors at the trail’s entrance near the intersection of Hudson Street and Hillview Place is a beloved display of murals on a public fence, painted by local and national artists alike.
For muralist Nico Cathcart, creating a mural on the fence last year was “a bit of a homecoming,” as she attended high school in the area. “It was not commissioned,” she told the Prospect in an email. “I happened to be in town visiting my parents, and had been speaking with Ithaca Murals when they invited me to paint.”
On the night of Sunday, May 31, however, many sections of the fence, including Cathcart’s mural, were vandalized with graffiti, amid the nationwide uprisings sparked by the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25. Spray-painted in angry red letters, messages like “Black Lives Matter,” “We Can’t Breathe,” and “Say His Name” now serve not only as unexpected new additions to the fence’s murals, but a constant, uncomfortable reminder to trailgoers of the police brutality and systemic racial injustices that have become altogether impossible for our country to continue to ignore.
A similar situation arose in Dallas that same weekend, when Black Lives Matter demonstrators vandalized the city’s three-story eyeball sculpture, which is located in the garden of the Joule Hotel downtown. “NOW UC US,” along with George Floyd’s initials, was spray-painted onto the sculpture amid protests in Dallas on May 29, leaving the bloodshot eye with a completely new, chilling meaning.
“This kind of graffiti is the language of people who do not feel heard,” says Cathcart. “To me, it is a memorial and a call to action.”
The role that street art so often plays in gentrifying neighborhoods is often overshadowed by its assimilation into the commercial art world and its growing commercial popularity for “selfie” backgrounds and Instagram photo shoots. But at its core, street art has historically served as a means of protest. Its accessible nature gives a public platform to those who have long been oppressed, silenced, and altogether excluded from the larger conversation. Even when street art is not explicitly meant to influence public opinion, it is, at the very least, meant to be thought-provoking in some capacity.
“When I saw the photos of the additions to the murals, my first immediate reaction was sadness for what was lost,” Jessica Warner, another artist who created one of the murals on the fence in Ithaca, told the Prospect in an email. “But I looked again and was interested in how the words themselves changed the meaning of the mural I painted.”
This protest-related street art in response to the Black Lives Matter movement is, of course, not at all specific to Ithaca and Dallas. Artists from around the world have responded to the demonstrations, which have now occurred in all 50 states and a number of cities worldwide. Streets have been embellished with new art in a multitude of forms, from freehand graffiti in public spaces to beautifully intricate murals that pay tribute to members of the black community who lost their lives to police brutality over the past decades.
There have also been a number of works commissioned specifically at the request of city officials, like the massive 50-foot-tall, bright-yellow-lettered “Black Lives Matter” street painting that spans 16th Street in Washington, D.C. Revealing the inability of sanctioned street art to fully articulate the desires of the community, activists enhanced that work with the words “Defund the Police,” referencing D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposal to increase the budget for law enforcement.
Much of this new Black Lives Matter–related public art and graffiti has appeared on what would otherwise be, for the most part, blank canvasses—bare sides of buildings, lumber that businesses have used to board up windows, or most recently, on statues of Confederate leaders (though those instances really fall into their own category entirely). But when cities like Ithaca and Dallas are faced with graffiti that’s cropped up on existing public art, it has a tendency to spark heated community debates that further complicate the conversation.
Some Ithaca residents have expressed solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement by expressing a preference to leave the graffiti as is, at least for the time being. “I would consider it defacement if there was an attempt to actually remove the painting or distort the images,” commented one anonymous Ithaca resident in the Ithaca Murals Facebook group, when discussions surrounding the incident were opened up to the public online. “But this is just words overlaid on the murals, and it speaks to the urgency of our moment.”
Wikimedia Commons
“Black Lives Matter” being painted on Tryon Street in Charlotte, North Carolina
On the other hand, some community members question the seemingly opportunistic motives of people they consider vandals. “There were plenty of blank areas they could have used. No need to deface others’ art,” a resident wrote. If this act was “truly meant to convey a political message,” why not vandalize a governmental property downtown or in a less remote location instead? Why deface a beloved display of public art that hundreds of individuals enjoy on a regular basis?
What the individuals asking these questions fail to grasp is that the graffiti location in question is perhaps more deliberate than they realize. Ithaca is a predominantly white town in the Finger Lakes region of New York state; by default, the majority of folks that frequent the South Hill Recreation Trail on a daily basis are, presumably, white. Right now, forcing the community to sit with their discomfort and take the time to examine their role in society is arguably more important than turning a blind eye to all that’s going on, or restoring the murals to their original look.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be able to go for walks on tree-lined trails without it being in our face that these things are happening [in our country] over and over,” said Warner. “It’s sad to see paintings damaged, but it’s just a painting, not another person dead.”
Similarly, Cathcart agrees that, while unexpected, the graffiti over her mural is serving an important purpose right now. “I believe public art has the responsibility to convey a message, to start a conversation,” she said. “These words might make some uncomfortable, but it’s a great time to ask yourself why that makes you uncomfortable. That’s the purpose.” Both Cathcart and Warner have proposed finding a way to work the graffiti into the murals as a permanent addition, but agreed that this would come at a later date, if at all.
Regardless of what’s to come for the South Hill Recreation Trail murals—and any other “vandalized” public art around the world—there’s no argument that it’s successfully serving its purpose of calling attention to the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement. If, at the very least, protest graffiti forces people to stop and think, provokes difficult conversations within the community, or sparks a new shift in attitude, surely that’s the biggest impact art of any medium can make.
