indecline - COlabs / Flint Public Art Project, American
Greetings from Flint, 2017
On crumbling walls around Flint, Michigan, anonymous artists from the collectives indecline and COlabs working in collaboration with the Flint Public Art Project have been painting murals in an ode to the city, with the purpose of keeping attention on the effects of its notorious water crisis. This particular mural is formatted ironically like an actual post card titled “Greetings from Flint,” produced during the middle of the twentieth century. That original post card, like most examples of its kind, captured the most celebrated and memorable attractions in the area, but this new mural rendition includes an assortment of images alluding to the lead water crisis. Particularly compelling is the “I” in the center of the word Flint. The words “Flint Lives Matter” is drawn is the same manner as the Black Lives Matter symbol to call attention to how this majority Black community is historically marginalized and still experiencing slow violence. The mural is blunt, having poison symbols on the water tower and depicting brown water flowing from a tap. It confronts the viewer with the poison and the slow response in aid of the community. Label by Annabelle Marcais
For a video on the mural’s creation, see here: https://www.co-labs.us/indecline