The murals spoke out: Reflecting on protest art in the wake of George Floyd's murder
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Near George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, a large, vibrant mural of Floyd overlooks a parking lot, surrounded by vines and flowers.
"This mural we did on the week of Juneteenth. So that was really important," said Leslie Barlow, one of the artists who worked on the mural in 2020. "It was the first Juneteenth after George Floyd's murder."
She also recalls a person close to Floyd telling her it was one of their favorite portraits of him in Minneapolis.
The mural also includes hands raised in the Black Power fist and the words “Black Lives Matter.” Like many murals painted in the wake of Floyd’s murder, this one has begun to fade.
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“I see some outline work that needs to get touched up here,” said Bayou Bay, another artist who worked on the mural.
“Look at this bird, though! That's a nice bird,” he added, pointing out a cardinal featured in the mural, representing ancestry.
“That is a good bird,” said Juliette Myers, who also worked on the project.
The mural was an early work of Creatives After Curfew, a collective of artists who banded together following the murder of George Floyd, looking for a way to respond to the tragic event.
Finding space for grief
Following the news of George Floyd’s murder, artist Juliette Myers remembers feeling called to action.
“Everybody's heartstrings were just pulled to be out in the streets,” Myers said. “There was just like an urgency to come together to find more ways to speak out.”
Bay remembers when he saw the videos of Floyd’s death at the hands of police. “For me, [it] was a lot like when the videos for Philando came out,” Bay said, referencing the police killing of Philando Castile in 2016.
“Except for, it was three blocks away. And suddenly, over the course of the next few hours, it went from everyone being in their homes to everybody being on my corner.”
The grief surrounding Floyd’s death sparked protests and unrest across the Twin Cities.
As artists started to think about how to speak out about injustice, about 20 of them gathered in Phelps Park. COVID-19 restrictions and stay-at-home orders made it difficult for people to mourn and process the tragedy together. But this group, which would become Creatives After Curfew, offered a space for a collective reckoning.
“Many people got a chance to see what was going on, and many people got the chance to come together around it,” said Bayou Bay.
At the first meeting, deep sadness was still fresh for many in the group, including Leslie Barlow.
“A lot of us identify as Black, and so it wasn't easy to, you know, like, mobilize right away... it still is a lot to talk about right now,” said Barlow. “We decided we wanted to work in collaboration in some way.”
Art became the way the artist found their voice and began to heal.
From boards to brick
At first, the collective began painting on the plywood boards that covered businesses during the unrest that summer.
Their work featured the names and faces of Black victims who had been killed by police — like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor — and messages of social justice.
Across from Roosevelt High School in south Minneapolis, another Creatives After Curfew mural spans two buildings. It shows a crowd holding signs that read “Protect Trans Lives,” “Black Lives Matter” and “Invest in Education.” It also features a cosmic sky and a phoenix.
“By this point, this was like maybe the fourth or fifth phoenix that we had painted,” Barlow said.
As the collective painted more and more murals, motifs started to pop up.
Barlow also recalled how ideas came up organically. She remembered a younger painter approaching her to ask if they could paint a fish in the mural.
“I was like, of course, can you? You go for it!” Barlow said with a smile.
“Just like letting the mural just develop naturally as people are talking and connecting and healing together... which was powerful.”
Creative After Curfew’s murals consistently reflected their message of social justice and healing. They even published a document, “A Guide to Creative Action and Narrative Strategies,” that outlined how artists could respond to injustice.
Chief among the topics in the document was uplifting and amplifying Black voices. It would guide them into future projects in collaboration with businesses and communities.
“We were trying to develop this framework, and kind of just develop our clear value system... for the messaging that we wanted to guide us as we continue to create art,” Juliette Myers said.
The backslide of interest
Creatives After Curfew started receiving more requests and commissions to paint murals across the Twin Cities. They eventually formed an LLC to manage the requests. Initially, there was a wellspring of support and interest in Black art. But in the years following?
“It fell off a cliff,” Bay said. “It was like, ‘Okay, I think we're about done with this whole Black Lives Matters thing. Yes, police brutality is bad, but... Hey! Everybody, go back to work,’” Bay said.
Now the focus has shifted further away from conversations around police reform and diversity initiatives, which bubbled up after George Floyd’s murder.
Bay said that if he’d been told five years ago that institutions like PBS, NPR and the NEA would be under attack for diversity work, he “wouldn't have believed it.”
“But it makes seeing the way the support dropped off,” he added.
As sustaining commissioned work has become more difficult in this new era, Creatives After Curfew has decided to wind down its business operations.
Bayou is quick to remind people that even though Creatives After Curfew found success in commissioned murals, its origins were grassroots, and the message was always more important than the notoriety.
“We became a collection of artists that became a mural collective and then started getting requests to do larger-scale murals for profit,” Bay said. “I want to make art that speaks truth no matter what... I don't want to only be paid for it when it's convenient.”
The artists involved still collaborate on projects, and their work can still be seen. As the collective enters a period of transition, Barlow said they’re focused on what comes next.
“What Creatives After Curfew did, said, meant... all of those things still are very meaningful to us today. But we live in a different time,” Barlow said.
