Art in protest

In USA, the protests have been going on for a while. As a person of color in United States, I could feel my blood gushing in my veins. However, I did not dare join the marches happening on the streets. I am an immigrant mother of a toddler, unemployed and with little resources at my expense. I cannot risk the dangers of police actions taken during protests and neither can I risk the infection of COVID-19. I felt helpless in showing my solidarity with the rest of the world.

Then came this call from a neighbor to paint boards put up by shop owners to prevent any vandalism during protests. These boards gave a haunted feeling to the liveliest street of the city, this street where we have lived since 2017. I joined the call with my husband and toddler. We all went in the scorching heat of summer, picked up our bucket of colors, brushes and began painting the base. We work always as a team.

The first painting is in an Indian tribal style called Warli painting. The figures are drawn using circles and triangles and lines. Three figures in red, blue and dark grey are skipping rope. Another figure is playing football/soccer while in hand stand. This imagery shows that dance is very prominent part of Black culture and so is soccer game. The first set of figures is suggestive of cooperation required for a happy living and the second figure is more about liberty of opportunities and joys of life.

Next few days were restive. I kept hearing protest calls and slogans on the streets every day. A few days later another call for artists to paint boards was posted on Facebook. I left my son with a neighbor, cooked lunch and left home to join other artists and enthusiast painters. This time I painted a circle of Warli figures in multitude of colors, holding hands. This mural is approximately on a 10×10 feet board. The colors represent all the people; people of different skin colors in unison. I used orange, red, blue, green, brown and purple to draw human forms.

As the days passed, more and more cases of police brutality on protesters were coming out. Among this came the news of Rahul Duvey who sheltered approximately 80 protesters when they were being cornered by the police. This news stayed with me.

The next mural that I painted was about the strength of this ‘sense of community’. I created a human pyramid, again using Warli figures and multitude of colors to include all the different communities of people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds as well as from different nationalities. The pyramid is a powerful form. It represents the power of unity and co-operation. We need to support each other in this movement for dignity and freedom of life.

I choose to draw forms that are symbolic representation of human beings rather than gender specific. The reason being that I am trying to portray certain traits of this difficult time and undercurrent of the protests happening across the globe. In these protests people of all genders, different races, ethnicities and nationalities have participated. I am showing the human spirit using these centuries old Indian traditional tribal mural painting style.