Off the Wall: Miami

[Electronic music] Public art has a long history in Miami.

I think we're unique in that our citizenship recognizes the importance of public art.

And I also want to credit that to the number of immigrants that live here.

We all want to see ourselves.

The Wynwood phenomena has become a destination now.

But you still can go to neighborhoods like Allapattah.

You still can go to Overtown and Liberty City and Miami Gardens and some little parts of the less Anglophile neighborhoods and find important work.

That started in the 80s.

There was this artist, street artist, amazing artist, Purvis Young.

He made markings all over the city.

If you have a construction, you know, how you put up the construction walls.

He would mark the walls at night.

And so you would come in the morning and you would see an actual mural of people, everyday, ordinary people going places.

He was really telling the story of urban Miami and the displacement of Black and Brown folk.

Public art is political work.

Public art is human beings embedding themselves in public spaces, right?

We are at the Bakehouse art complex.

The work outside this building is it's called Say Their Names.

And it is a text based mural.

It includes 541 names of victims of gun violence, police violence and domestic violence.

My personal journey with gun violence started when I think I was 17, when my my first boyfriend, he was shot and killed.

James was a graduate from Newark School of the Arts.

He and Chire went to school together.

He had a full scholarship to the University of Philadelphia, and he was attending school at the time of his death.

He had come home on a break and never got a chance to go back.

There was a long period of time that passed before I even was comfortable publicly talking about my own loss.

So, I wanted to do something public, I wanted to do something large, and I wanted to really address the issue that was facing this country.

I didn't think that this work would have the impact that it did.

I. I came one day and we just parked in front of his name.

Sebastian Gregory.

And I cry because to be there, to be remembered, I can come here to see his name, you know.

It's like a memorial for me.

The process of of of dealing with loss is is intense labor.

There's so much physical, emotional labor involved.

I wanted to do the physical and emotional labor because I thought that it was the least that I could do to to embed each name into my head and understand that I touched each name there.