Just a few days after George Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, a mural was created in Floyd’s honor at Heaven, the mural- and graffiti-packed skate park in downtown Hartford.
Artist Kim Hinds Jr. of Hartford – known by friends as Tree Sage – felt the need to paint the mural to think through his reactions to the latest killing of an innocent African American by a white police officer.
“There’s a certain amount of desensitization happening all the time with these deaths. Here it was happening again,” Hinds said. “I make art when I am not able to express myself when I feel certain things. When people come and look at it and say, ‘that’s what I’ve been feeling,’ it helps me process my emotions. When I’m on the bus and I see people standing in front of it, it makes me feel good.”
Hinds’ acrylic-paint mural shows a large head of Floyd, who is wearing a crown. Beside him, in a blue uniform, is a faceless pig, kneeling. Floyd died on May 25 after officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck for almost 9 minutes, even though Floyd repeatedly said “I can’t breathe.” Floyd’s death sparked protests nationwide. Some were peaceful. Others erupted into looting and destruction.
The title of Hinds’ piece is painted at the bottom: “Born a Target.”
Hinds left the pig faceless for a reason. Beyond the issue of the individual who killed Floyd, he said, is the larger issue of police culture.
“It’s not the individual. It’s the system. I understand that. I was in the military and it’s the same way of doing stuff. You lose your individuality,” said Hinds, a 2005 graduate of Windsor High School who served as an Army paratrooper in Afghanistan.
“If you can keep your humanity in that uniform, it’s a good thing, but so many times people become beastly and inhumane,” he said. “They see it as just doing their jobs. It’s that that you have to fight.”
Hinds said the title of the piece was inspired by a meme, showing a black youth with a target on his body, asking a doctor if it could be removed. Hinds could relate to that. Like many black men, he has been the victim of unwarranted police harassment during a traffic stop.
“I was getting out the vehicle and when he saw my size, he yelled ‘stop!’ and pulled out a shotgun and called for backup,” said Hinds, who is 6 feet 8. “I always get it a little bit extra because I’m so big.”
When discussing police harassment, Hinds is philosophical. “They fear what they don’t understand. They want to make you scared so that they are less scared themselves,” he said. “Their fear colors, their perceptions. You have to step back from that fear if you want to understand what is going on.”
Before Floyd’s killing, during coronavirus lockdown, Hinds painted inside his apartment: the walls, the windows, furniture, the refrigerator, a lamp all became his canvases. When Floyd died, Hinds channeled his quarantine stir-craziness into going outside and getting out his feelings on an outdoor canvas.
Heaven was a natural choice; any artist who wants to paint on its walls is welcome. “If the artwork resonates with people they let it stay,” he said.
Hinds has participated in some protests over Floyd’s killing. “I wasn’t going to protest. This is my platform. But I try to do my part,” he said. “I don’t like to focus on hatred. If we can all come together in hatred, then we can all come together in love. What can we do together as a community?”
He said he often rethinks his artworks and revisits them to make adjustments. He already knows he is going to add to his mural.
“I was talking to a friend and she was telling me, why do people keep forgetting Breonna Taylor,” he said, referring to the Black woman who was shot to death on March 13 by police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, while she slept in her apartment. “I’m going to add her. I’m going to give her a crown.”
Meanwhile, his mural has inspired another Heaven artist. To the left of Hinds’ mural is a large elaborate graffiti, with a caption, “Please I can’t breathe.”
Susan Dunne can be reached at sdunne@courant.com.
