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A Story of Anti-White Supremacy Art and a Karen With a Spray Can
An anti-racism mural goes up in Brooklyn. Three days later, it’s defaced. Take a wild guess who did it.
Last Friday afternoon, graphic artist Julian Alexander and creative producer Khadijat Oseni hosted a small curbside gathering at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In attendance was a small collective consisting of various creatives from the intersecting worlds of art, media, fashion and advertising. All were present to watch the reveal of the latest mural installment for the Supremacy Project, a visual art campaign dedicated to articulating specific contextualizations of White supremacy.
The black-and-white mural consists primarily of a photo of the iconographic tribute to America’s founding fathers, Mount Rushmore. The intent of the photo selection is to remind onlookers of White supremacy’s original power brokers. Sprawled across the top half of the 19’ x 10’ piece is the word “Supremacy.” Its type face is an intentional hybrid of apparel and Hypebeast cult brand Supreme and the CVS pharmacy logo. A closer look reveals soaring military fighter jets. This particular detail takes aim at Donald Trump’s audacity (last July 4th, he hosted a rally at Mount Rushmore, where he had Blue Angel jets fly above during his speech), while bringing full circle the historic complicity of the POTUS. With Friday sandwiched between the last presidential debate and the first day of early voting in New York, Alexander felt there was no better day to unveil his latest “conversation starter.”
On Friday at 4 p.m., the mural was erected for all pedestrians to view. By Monday night, it was vandalized. Security camera footage revealed the violator as a masked, fair-skinned woman wearing Lululemon pants, a thin hoodie, Canada Goose winter coat and huge diamond on her ring finger. “It’s hard not to laugh at the situation,” says Oseni, a thirty-something-year-old former photographer agent who prefers the tag “creative alchemist.” “If you looked up the urban dictionary definition of a Karen, the perpetrator checks all these boxes. You can’t script this better.”
The masked woman was accompanied by a fair-skinned male, who remained off to the side while she smeared brown acrylic paint across selective parts of…
