Black Muralism: Between Resistance and Suppression
By Stephanie Mercado-Irizarry
Recent debates over the removal of the Black Lives Matter Mural in Washington, D.C. highlight critical tensions surrounding racial politics, collective memory, and public art. [1] Originally painted in June 2020 amid mass protests following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the mural emerged at a pivotal moment when American society once again confronted systemic racism and police brutality against Black communities. In response to widespread outrage, this mural transformed an ordinary street into a space of collective resistance and social reclamation, directly confronting institutional power structures and the boundaries imposed by dominant racial and political norms. [2]
Historically, artistic interventions in public spaces have functioned as strategies of resistance against oppressive structures, serving as a powerful visual language to communicate resistance and affirm the collective memory of marginalized groups. During the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, for instance, murals were utilized as tools for social and political criticism, as well as identity affirmation in the midst of racial segregation. [3] In this sense, the Black Lives Matter mural in Washington, D.C. belongs to a long tradition of politically charged art that explicitly challenges the status quo. From the Del Rey Mural, an early landmark of the Chicano movement, to the influential Wall of Respect in Chicago, public art serves to render marginalized discourses visible, creating spaces where political and communal reflection become inevitable.
The conservative reaction to the mural’s presence demonstrates the discomfort provoked by explicitly visible antiracist struggles. While public art has historically been used to affirm state authority—through monuments commemorating colonial or imperial figures—it also carries the potential to disrupt dominant narratives and reconfigure public space. Threats to withhold federal funding to force the mural’s removal—and demands to rename the plaza from ‘Black Lives Matter Plaza’ to ‘Liberty Plaza’— reveal how visual interventions bearing a political message are often perceived as violations of the established norms upheld by power structures. This disruptive potential of public art can be further analyzed through Lewis Gordon’s concept of “illicit appearance.” Gordon explains that within racist and colonial systems, the mere presence of racialized individuals in traditionally exclusive spaces is considered inherently problematic or dangerous. In “Of Illicit Appearance: The L.A. Riots/Rebellion as a Portent of Things to Come,” Gordon writes that “illicit appearance” occurs when the visibility of Black people is automatically perceived as a threat to established structures. Following this logic, the existence of the mural in Washington, D.C. represented an act of defiance by challenging implicit racial hierarchies and narratives that deny the experiences of Black communities as being worthy of remembrance.
[Geoff Livingston, “Black Lives Matter Plaza (Explored),” 2020]
Gordon further explores how the public exposure of deep social contradictions generates discomfort and prompts racist reactions in the United States. By making systemic injustices visible, the mural forced a confrontation, one that remains ideologically contested. On one hand, it symbolically disrupted the visual landscape of institutional power by asserting a Black political presence in proximity to the White House. On the other hand, its state-sponsored origin raises questions about whether it served as an act of resistance or a strategy of containment, a form of virtue signaling aimed at diffusing unrest rather than encouraging structural change. This ambiguity reflects the role of public art within systems of power: it can both challenge and absorb dissent.
However, I would argue that the mural’s visible presence (authorized yet unsettling) offers an illustration of “illicit appearance,” which does not necessarily involve explicitly violent or transgressive actions but rather reveals how presence can disrupt established social norms. As Gordon writes, “illicit appearance suggests also a paradox of racialized invisibility. The offending blackness is in fact a hyper-visibility, the effect of which is the erasure of individuating or contextualizing considerations – that is, human invisibility.” In this light, the mural’s placement near a seat of institutional power becomes a disruptive moment that compels confrontation with the very contradictions it was meant to both reveal and, perhaps, contain. Its bold, racialized visibility functions not only as a symbol of protest but also as a site of contested legibility and hyper-surveillance.
In this centennial year of Frantz Fanon’s birth, his thought offers additional insight into the political implications of this issue. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon emphasizes how racialized individuals continually face the challenge of asserting their humanity against systems that exclude them from “legitimized” categories of being. Fanon highlights how Black individuals exist in a “zone of nonbeing,” from which their entry into legitimized spaces is perceived as disruptive, even violent. Fanon writes: “There is a zone of nonbeing, an extraordinarily sterile and arid region, an utterly naked declivity where an authentic upheaval can be born” (10). Within this zone, any attempt by the Black subject to appear, act, or claim space is perceived as a disruption of the established order.
The mural, by explicitly representing demands for racial justice in proximity to a symbolic space of power (the White House), embodies precisely this act of disrupting dominant logic—an action Fanon would define as a necessary rupture for social transformation. Importantly, Fanon emphasizes the necessity of such conscious and deliberate actions to challenge and reconfigure oppressive colonial and racial conditions. In this way, political action entails transformation, beginning from racial self-consciousness and extending into collective actions aimed at altering established social orders. From this perspective, the Black Lives Matter mural in D.C. can be understood as an example of actionality: a conscious, political act oriented toward radical social transformation, particularly through how communities engaged with, contested, and reclaimed its symbolism. [4]
In commemorating Fanon’s centennial, highlighted this year by the Caribbean Philosophical Association’s conference theme, “Fanon at One Hundred,” the urgent need to create new concepts and new ways of being human in colonial and racialized contexts becomes even more pertinent. Fanon argues that transforming colonial and racial structures demands more than superficial changes—it involves an ongoing struggle to redefine humanity itself, a struggle significantly empowered by muralist art. Thus, both Fanon and Gordon provide critical frameworks that illuminate the political and philosophical power of muralism as an art form. Both thinkers emphasize that racial presence and visibility in traditionally exclusionary contexts constitute transgressive acts essential for dismantling oppressive narratives.
In “We All Fall Down,” Dana Francisco Miranda also reminds us that “to alter the public face of a racist order is fundamentally an act of destructuring.” In this sense, muralist interventions are not merely aesthetic gestures; they reconfigure how publics are formed and whose histories are made visible. Therefore, attempts to remove this mural represent not merely an administrative act, but rather a political action aimed at restoring the hegemony of racists. The illicit appearance—the visible presence of racialized subjects—destabilizes and challenges notions of a social order that is ordered along racist lines. At the same time, the conservative reaction against the BLM mural demonstrates precisely the disruptive potential of mural art to question structurally-rooted racial systems.
As I have previously argued in “El arte público como ritual de resistencia,” murals possess a unique capacity to redefine and transform the spaces they inhabit. Their importance lies in their ability to reflect and analyze the social contexts in which they are created, fostering communal bonds by remaining accessible to all. By not restricting them to exclusive interpretations of art, muralism encourages broad, participatory engagement, making it a powerful visual and symbolic tool for challenging dominant discourses. Artists and collectives who are aware of this transformative potential often carry out a form of intentional resistance through their creative practices. These artists approach muralism not as aesthetic beautification but as a political and pedagogical act, one that emerges from and responds to the communities they represent. In these cases, murals become living dialogues that assert presence, reclaim space, and mobilize critical thought.
At the same time, it’s essential to recognize that not all mural practices operate within the politicized and community-oriented framework characterized by the BLM mural in D.C. While that particular intervention emerged as a visible challenge to racial injustice, not all public art functions in such explicitly resistant ways. The growing visibility of muralism, especially in urban areas, has also opened the door for its co-optation by city-led beautification campaigns or private development interests. Some of the very features that gave the BLM mural visibility and symbolic weight (such as its prominent location and evocative messaging) can also be co-opted to serve market-driven or depoliticized agendas. In neighborhoods undergoing rapid development or gentrification, murals may be used to project a sense of “community” or “cultural vibrancy” that appeals to outside investors or tourists, while longtime residents are displaced. In such cases, the original community voice risks being diluted or erased in favor of sanitized, depoliticized imagery that aligns more with economic interests than with grassroots expression.
Acknowledging this tension is crucial for understanding the double-edged nature of public art. While muralism holds immense potential for fostering resistance, collective memory, and cultural affirmation, it can also be instrumentalized in ways that mask deeper structural injustices. The challenge, then, lies in recognizing and uplifting those artistic interventions that are rooted in solidarity and community engagement, while remaining critical of projects that serve more symbolic or market-driven purposes.
This complexity becomes especially apparent in moments when state institutions embrace the aesthetics of resistance without addressing the material conditions that fuel such resistance. The Black Lives Matter Mural in D.C. stands as a paradoxical example: while its creation transformed public space into a visible site of protest and solidarity, it also drew criticism for functioning as a symbolic substitute for meaningful policy reform. At the time of its unveiling, various media outlets reported on critiques that framed the mural as a performative gesture—one that risked neutralizing the urgency of the movement by redirecting public attention toward visual spectacle rather than structural change. [5] Such tensions reveal the fragile line between solidarity and appropriation in state-sponsored public art. Still, despite its origins, the mural facilitated an enduring space for public engagement, reflection, and memory—underscoring how even contested artworks can become part of a broader political terrain where meaning continues to be negotiated.
Finally, the struggle over the mural in Washington D.C. underscores both the political power of mural art and the vulnerability of collective memory when confronted by conservative backlash or institutional co-optation. It reminds us that struggles for racial justice are deeply visual, and defending such symbolic spaces remains an essential, ongoing task. Through these spaces, we can envision and creatively construct new modes of existence. In this manner, Mayor Muriel Bowser’s recent statement that the plaza “will evolve” with new artistic projects opens to possibilities for renewal and sustained visual resistance. [6] Yet this evolution must be watched with a critical eye: in politically challenging times, public art can either serve as a placeholder for inaction or become a genuine catalyst for collective hope, unity, and transformation. Muralism remains crucial not only for preserving memory but also for shaping space itself into the just futures we envision.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the blog’s editor, Dana Francisco Miranda, for his thoughtful feedback and insightful suggestions throughout the development of this piece. His scholarship and engagement helped refine the arguments presented here.
Notes
[1] See Ayana Archie. “City crews have begun removing the 'Black Lives Matter' street mural in D.C.” NPR. March 10, 2025.
[2] Although the mural functions as a powerful visual intervention in public space, its commissioning by Mayor Muriel Bowser places it within the apparatus of institutional power rather than emerging from grassroots organizing. This ambivalent origin highlights the complex interplay between state-sanctioned symbolism and community-led protest. As such, the mural occupies a paradoxical position: while visually aligned with a broader movement for racial justice, its authorized nature foregrounds the uneasy ways dissent may be both made visible and managed by the state.
[3] For instance, Mapped (Making a People’s Pathway for Engaging Design) is a public platform and digital library that documents neighborhood projects around public spaces in Chicago.
[4] Murals, even initially state-sponsored ones, can gain renewed political significance once they’re contested or erased, as their existence and eventual erasure become part of broader struggles around visibility, public space, and power dynamics. A mural’s ultimate significance (its “actionality”) then resides perhaps less in the motivations behind its creation and more in how communities engage and interpret it over time.
[5] See Juliana Kim. “D.C.'s Black Lives Matter mural will be erased. Look back at the iconic street painting.” NPR. March 10, 2025.
[6] See Michel Martin and Majd Al-Waheidi. “Trump wants to clear homeless camps in D.C.; Mayor says his policies hurt the city.” NPR. March 10, 2025.
References
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press, 1986.
Gordon, Lewis R. “Of Illicit Appearance: The L.A. Riots/Rebellion as a Portent of Things to Come.” Truthout. May 12 2012.
Mercado Irizarry, Stephanie. “El arte público como ritual de resistencia.” Candela Review 2 (2022): 76-89.
Miranda, Dana Francisco. “We All Fall Down.” The APA Blog: Black Issues in Philosophy. August 4, 2020.
Cover Photo Credit: Sami Aksu, “Rusty Graffiti Spray Cans Stacked on Each Other,” 2021.
Stephanie Mercado-Irizarry is a scholar and educator whose work explores decolonial thought, Afro-Caribbean philosophy, and the role of public art in anti-colonial resistance. Her academic practice is grounded in fostering inclusive and transformative spaces for under-resourced communities in higher education. She holds a Ph.D. in Literatures, Cultures, and Languages from the University of Connecticut, teaches Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at UConn Stamford, and serves as Program Coordinator for the campus’ Latinx Learning Community. Her transdisciplinary research centers on Caribbean literature, muralism, and social movements. She serves as Secretary of Critical Theory and Social Thought in Latin America and the Caribbean with the Caribbean Philosophical Association.