What happens when a world famous mural artist, commissioned recently by Bono on behalf of Paint (RED) to help raise awareness in the fight against AIDS, whose was selected earlier this year to paint murals at Dr. Maya Angelou Community High School in South L.A. as part of a week-long Maya Angelou Mural Festival in Los Angeles, and whose work incorporates images of animals….gets commission by the Charlottesville Mural Project and a local developer to paint a mural of a horse on the side of a building on West Main Street in Charlottesville, Virginia?

We make it about confederate statues, race, and gentrification of course! And C-Ville Weekly runs a story about it called “Yay or neigh?: Mural stirs controversy.” Link: https://www.c-ville.com/yay-or-neigh-mural-stirs-controver…/

This from C-ville’s Instagram on the story: “Looking at this mural, I’m guessing that maybe they meant residents could ‘LIBERATE’ themselves out of $2,200 for a 1BR,” tweeted Charlottesville journalist Jordy Yager about the new artwork at Six Hundred West Main (@sixhundredwestmain), the luxury apartment building where rents range from $1,240 to more than $4,300. The mural, by white South African artist Faith XLVII (@faith47), has also been likened to Confederate statues, and some wonder why residents of the historically black neighborhoods that surround it weren’t invited to participate in the mural creation process. 📷: @mulberryave #cville #charlottesville #virginia #westmainstreet #mural

The artist, a white female South African who goes by Faith47 [Faith XLVII], shot back:

faith47: “Please do not insinuate that i am in support of confederate statues. Quite the opposite. Im sorry that you have misinterpreted the artwork, but in fact it is meant to be about the breaking free from oppressive regimes . Unlike what you insinuate about me being white, as you obviously disregard the many years of work I’ve spent doing activist work for human rights causes, gender and racial equality. I understand your frustrations at the gentrification issues but please do not try to slander me as a racist or conservative as that is absolutely inexcusable.”

A little more about the artist:

“If there’s one central theme that runs through Faith’s art, it’s the interplay between life on the planet and the myriad issues that face humanity. The animals that she has taken to painting on wood speak to the relationship between humans and the environment. “I’m trying to play with some archetypal animals that relate to our human emotions and represent different parts of our being,” she says. “I think we have absolutely disrespected nature and it’s to our own demise and I think that we have to reconnect to the animals and the planet and see ourselves as part of it in order to [start] living sustainably and thinking of the earth as an organism.” — LA Magazine

Her website: https://faith47.com/

Arts Development People