Ariana Grande is being welcomed back to Manchester with a street art mural in her honour.
The pop star will headline Manchester Pride Live on Sunday in her first performance in the city since One Love Manchester, the fundraising concert she organised in the wake of the terror attack at her Manchester Arena show in 2017.
It's the work of street artist Akse, whose incredible spray paint portraits of famous faces including David Bowie, Prince and Nelson Mandela have graced buildings across the city.
The artist, who was born in Paris to Vietnamese parents and has lived in Manchester for 20 years, teased an image of his latest creation on Instagram as he applied the finishing touches.
The mural has been installed on the corner of Chorlton Street and Aytoun Street, on the edge of the Gay Village where Kampus, a new neighbourhood being built by developers Capital & Centric and Henry Boot Developments, is taking shape.
The Manchester Pride parade will pass the artwork on Saturday on its way to the finish line on Fairfield Street.
Adam Higgins, of Capital & Centric, said: “Akse is one of Manchester’s most recognised and iconic street artists. We’ve worked with him before and when he wanted a temporary space to celebrate Pride, Kampus was the obvious choice.
"It’s super central and next to the Gay Village so will be right in the action this weekend. We think the piece looks awesome and can’t wait to see how people react.”
Ariana was made an honorary citizen of Manchester for her response to the arena attack, in which 22 innocent people died and hundreds more were injured.
Then aged just 24, the star returned to the city to visit children in hospital and rallied the support of her famous friends to stage One Love Manchester at Emirates Old Trafford cricket ground.
The concert brought together 50,000 fans in a show of unity and defiance and raised millions of pounds for those bereaved and injured.
The 26-year-old spoke about the impact the atrocity, as well as the death of her late ex-boyfriend and friend, the rapper Mac Miller, had on her in a candid interview with Vogue recently .
She told the magazine it was 'not her trauma', adding: "It’s those families'. It's their losses, and so it’s hard to just let it all out without thinking about them reading this and reopening the memory for them."
Speaking about One Love Manchester, she said: "I'm proud that we were able to raise a lot of money with the intention of giving people a feeling of love or unity, but at the end of the day, it didn't bring anyone back."
Manchester Pride opens today with the first day of the four-day Gay Village Party. The parade takes place tomorrow, coinciding with the first day of the new two-day Manchester Pride Live music festival, which takes over Mayfield Depot on Saturday and Sunday.
The event draws to a close on Monday with the annual vigil, remembering the loved ones the LGBT+ community has lost to HIV and standing together against the stigma and persecution that still exists around the world.
Manchester Pride 2019
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