Black-led mural festival builds community while helping beautify Detroit with new art
(CBS DETROIT) - If you're driving down Woodward Avenue this week, you may notice a few muralists adding some color to brick buildings throughout the city of Detroit and Highland Park.
It's all a part of the BLKOUT Walls Street Art Festival, a bi-annual Black-led festival first held in Detroit in 2021.
"This is the city of blackness, and [it] feels so right and fitting that it's here," Sydney G. James said.
The festival was co-founded by James, a native Detroit Artist, Thomas "Detour" Evans of Denver, Colorado, and Max Sansing of Chicago, Illinois, as a direct response to their shared history of participating in mural festivals throughout the country, where participating artists aren't compensated, and there's limited racial diversity among the artists represented.
The purpose of BLKOUT Walls is to celebrate art and community while helping beautify the city.
"BLKOUT Walls is full of artists that actually are from here, live here, and spaces similar too," James said.
"So, it's nuances we understand. We get the culture, and that's what we're giving the people. We're giving the people us but on a main stage."
James says she's using the street art festival to breathe life into some of the city's bleaker areas, and she has a team of muralists, many like Ijania Cortez, creating in their own backyard.
"It's right up the street from my house," Cortez said. "It's right around where I grew up. So, it meant a lot for me to do this."
Others, like Ghanaian artist Mohammed Awudu, traveled thousands of miles to help bring the vision of BLKOUT Walls to life.
"I feel like home, trust me," Awudu said. "I want to come back here and paint all the time."
The festival showcases monumental murals that send a message, some of hope, some of heroism, and some that simply help us feel whole.
"I want people to walk about feeling something, this piece especially," local artist Bakpak Durden said. "I want them to feel at home."