Three days after George Floyd’s murder, Twin Cities artists Cadex Herrera, Xena Goldman, and Greta McLain created a now-iconic mural on the side wall of Cup Foods at 38th Street and Chicago in Minneapolis. This piece was intended to transform a location that was a tragic marker of an extrajudicial antiblack murder into an important community space for memorialization, organizing, fellowship, and healing.

Across the river in Saint Paul, the Midway neighborhood became the site of conflict between protesters and the police in early June, about a week and a half after George Floyd’s murder. In this context, graffiti reading “Mama” was spray painted on a wall of the former Walmart, located in the epicenter of this conflict. While simple in form and quick in its execution, we’d argue that this illicitly painted piece of text—a reference to George Floyd’s desperate plea for help—is as powerful as any larger, more enduring mural in its call for transformational change. However, given local responses to graffiti, “Mama” was bound to be short-lived. Within just a few days the piece was removed and its call for change was silenced.

Artworks created in the streets are by nature ephemeral and have the ability to capture raw and immediate individual and community responses; the meaning of these pieces is negotiated and shifts over time. Starting with works such as the George Floyd mural and the Mama graffiti, the Urban Art Mapping research team, an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students based at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota, began working in early June to collect digital documentation of street art that emerged in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, ranging from monumental murals to small stickers and including commissioned art as well as unsanctioned pieces. We have seen that the art made in response to this act of injustice is an expression of the anger, frustration, and pain felt in communities across this country and around the world that needs to be preserved.

Read the full article about art and social justice by Dr. Heather Shirey at ARTS Blog.