Through the creation of the Life is Living festivals, Marc Bamuthi Joseph found another way to frame the conversation around power, politics, and public space. The festivals, rich with collective energy, served as a means of conducting fieldwork for the text and design of red, black and GREEN: a blues (rbGb). One of the many axes of collaboration were the Estria Invitational Graffiti Battles hosted in Harlem, Chicago, and Oakland. Estria Miyashiro is a friend of Bamuthi and a veteran graffiti artist in the Bay Area art scene. Miyashiro and Bamuthi were motivated to collaborate by their shared desire to use their work in the hip-hop arts to empower local communities and encourage lasting systemic change.

Each battle challenged popular local graffiti artists to create work related to themes of sustainability. The theme for Chicago was “Earth,” and the murals created by the contestants were hung at different locations throughout the city with the hope of inspiring dialogue and imparting a sense of urgency around the importance of life in the midst of urban violence.

The picture below shows a portion of the group mural created at Chicago’s Clarendon Park. This highlights the opportunities for connection embedded in Bamuthi’s practice which, in turn, fed the creative process of rbGb.

Photo: Eve Rivera