Black Lives Matter

The Black Lives Matter street mural in Indianapolis is a large, colorful mural reading "#BLACKLIVESMATTER", with a raised fist, that 18 artists painted across a downtown roadway in August 2020, as part of the George Floyd protests. The mural is located on Indiana Avenue, the historic hub of the city's Black culture, on the same corner as the Madam C. J. Walker Building. 18 individual local African American artists created the artwork, each artist responsible for one of the images in the message, and organized activists working with local Black Lives Matter groups. In contrast to several of the other Black Lives Matter street murals created around the same time, Indianapolis's is not painted in yellow road markings, but instead consists of many different contributions from artists painting in their own distinct style, which comes together as a single artwork. Design Indiana Ave is a diagonal street, and the mural is oriented so that it reads left-to-right in the northwest direction. The mural is composed of 18 distinct pieces by different artists in their own style, but that all coalesce in a single work with common thematic elements, such as contrasting colors and geometric shapes. Beyond the Black Lives Matter mural, each of the artists work in different media or subject matter, and many of them do not specialize in street art at all. Artists sketched their work on the pavement using chalk and tape before applying paint, using both rollers and brushes. The mural was created with contributions from 18 artists: #: Jarrod Dortch B: Nathaniel Rhodes L: Rebecca Robinson (PSNOB) A: Amiah Mims C: Billy Hoodoo K: Kevin Wes L: John G. Moore I: Gary Gee V: Deonna Craig E: Rae Parker S: Ess McKee M: Wavy Blayne A: Harriet Watson T: Shane Young (FITZ) T: Israel Solomon E: Shamira Wilson R: Ashley Nora [Fist]: Kenneth Hordge (Fingercreations) Several of the pieces contain words and political messages, such as Kevin Wes' "K", which includes the name Michael Taylor, a Black teenager killed by Indianapolis police in 1987, who was also the artist's cousin. John G. Moore's "L" depicts the word "VOTE" written vertically, next to an image of a ballot and ballot box. Gary Gee's "I" contains an image of Taylor, whose death the artist stated was one of his earliest memories of police violence. Others were more abstract, focusing either on explicit symbols or using shape and color.