Changing the coversation
I chose to draw this piece of art as creative response to get better understanding and focus on Black Lives Matter. This piece of art shows the picture of black plastic bags with names of dead people on top of them. What do these names represent? They are names of black people who were killed by police officers. Officers are legally protective to kill them, but not morally correct. People may have different perspectives on these shootings; however, at the end, the family who will forever remember those passed away, still suffer the most. The lady in this drawing is Taja Lindley, who wants to stand up and help these bags moving around, so they can escape from the suffering from these police officers. I love her arm movements. The arms bring movement to the death. They point at what is important.
Black Lives Matter is representing those black dead peoples’ names. It shows black people need to stand up, do something to against this kind of discrimination in this society that we have been facing. Their memories are on plastic bags. These are items we throw away. But in this picture, she is wearing a dress made from those bags. I am proposing that we carry on the memory and we push for changes. On the other hand, the sign Blue Lives Matter is smaller and is representing names of polices that were killed. Nowadays, the news media counters with Blue Lives Matter, and they barely talk about Black Lives Matter. There is so much pity for those officers. I symbolize that in the neat drawing. I think her art pushes us to see the non-equal relationship between the two lives. I believe this shows structural racism because it pits together two parts that are not equal. Our media, our national stories, their positions in society make it so that when someone says Black Lives Matter, we jump to - they are less than. They are plastic bags. While the lives of officers is are lifted up. They are listed. They are honored by the majority community.
As you can see the head of the lady in the drawing turn forward to Black Lives Matter because she wants to reinforce the sadness of families who have to suffer after the shootings. It is structural racism is because these shootings is targeted toward to black people. In this society, people always think black people is bad, illegal, and always do something against the society. The message that Taja Lindley wants to bring to us is to tell us, life is not equal, we need to balance it out through art, politics, and having conversations of people who are different than us. I look at this piece of art, and the words that come to my head are “Blue Lives Matter” and “Black Lives Matter”. I want this to be restored behavior because I want to reconstruct the narrative. I use my second picture to cover the names of officers. I want to reconstruct the conversation. The conversation needs to not include them but focus on the lives below. Their memories need to be living to creating changes.