An Empty Wall

Living Walls, a local nonprofit organization, hosted a wonderful street art event in Atlanta in August.  Artists painted amazing murals on empty walls in different parts of the city.  One of those murals, by the Argentinian artist Hyuro, caused controversy from the start.  It featured multiple images of a woman who -- initially nude -- grew fur that turned into a garment, then she stepped out of it and the wolf walked away.  It was a wonderful piece of art on a bleak corner across the street from the grounds of the Federal penitentiary.  While some in the neighborhood loved it, others didn't.  The mural was vandalized a couple of times, and when the issue went to the neighborhood association, the Chosewood Park neighborhood voted to have it removed.  So volunteers from Living Walls came and painted it over and now it's gone.  I haven't been back since that Sunday afternoon in late August when Sarah and I went to see it.  It was wonderful, and I am glad I got to see it.  But now it's gone.

And now it's happened again.  This time it was a French artist named Pierre Roti, who started the work soon after the Living Walls event.  The mural is on a long wall on University Avenue in south Atlanta in the Pittsburgh neighborhood, just off the interstate.  The wall is adjacent to Carey Limosine and is more than 200 feet long.  Roti paints with spray paint, and weeks of work went into creating this piece.  But some in the neighborhood found the imagery (including snakes) disturbing, and others felt it was disrespectful, that the neighborhood was not engaged consulted before the work was created.  In November, a group including a retired state legislator took it upon themselves to paint over the work.  The murals' supporters showed up and worked to remove the paint before it dried, and a crew from the Georgia Department of Transportation -- the actual owner of the wall -- helped clean it up.

But then there were issues about who approved what and although Living Walls did do what the city told them to do, in terms of permitting for this site, the wall actually did belong to GDOT and they hadn't approved it.  So there was an announcement that the work would be painted as early as this week.

Caroline and I went to see it on Sunday afternoon.  By that time, it not only had been defaced by the neighborhood group in early November but someone had glued posters over it.  But it still could mostly be seen.  It's huge and hallucinatory and I can't even describe it.  My French is not good enough to read the inscription which seems to include the word "xenophobia."  (To get a better photo of the inscription I would have had to step out into the street, which is something that didn't seem worth the risk.)

 

But now it's gone.  Yesterday the GDOT painted over it and now it's back to being a long gray wall, waiting for the next vandal with a can of spray paint or a pile of posters.  Maybe the community can agree on a new piece of art to replace this one, and get the appropriate permits from GDOT to place it there.  But given the dispute over this one, it's hard to see any kind of community consensus emerging.  There were plenty of people in the Pittsburgh neighborhood who liked this one.  Whose decision is it?  There always will be people who don't like a particular work of art.  Do they get to veto a work that it is in a public place?

This year Living Walls tried to place murals in some neighborhoods that had been hard-hit by the recession.  They were trying to help revitalize communities by installations of murals.  Now there's talk about the need for more involvement of the community, which sounds good, but it's hard for me to see exactly how that's supposed to work.  Twice burned, if I were Living Walls I'd stay in the neighborhoods where I was welcome.  And the community leaders who have driven the decisions to remove the murals may not own the walls but they are now responsible for what follows.  What happens now?

We'll see.