Blue Lies
Blue Lies
“To protect and serve”? Get the fuck outta here! The unfortunate events of 2020 compelled me to create this piece in honor of the spirit of the people who inspire my art, the spirit of African people. Blue Lies documents the depraved nature of a criminal injustice system. My canvas, bathed in blue, to represent the uniform of the gatekeepers of that system. Trapped in this sea of blue, “lies” the 8 minutes and 46 seconds it took to drown a black man under the knee of a racist cop. The badge number of the murderer (1087), marks a finally recorded, recurring moment in time. A severed white line illuminates the spine of Jacob Blake, shot in the back seven times. The bullets of another murder circled in white, while the blood of another black man flows in the street. This blood flow obscures the first number of a president who nourishes the audacious nature of the red wave in this blue sea. As the blood flow obscures, it also reveals the day in June that was the birth of a queen called Breonna. In my final symbolic moment, the word “Cop” is flipped on its head the way its victims are before they are railroaded through to the next lie, Innocent until proven guilty, and the next lie, blind justice, and the next lie, all men are created equal, and the next lie, a jury of your peers, and the next lie...