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The Unauthorized Biography of a Black Man
Seattle, Washington artist barry johnson (b. 1984) created this twenty-three-panel mural during the global COVID-19 pandemic shutdown when many businesses closed to cover the windows at Two Union Square in downtown Seattle. The work features local dancer and choreographer David Rue. Painted with his eyes closed, the sequence slowly deconstructs Rue’s face ending with the James Baldwin quote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
2020 was a moment of converging crisis from the Black Lives Matter movement to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shutdown and those feelings are reflected in what we created and consumed in pop culture; not just that year, but even now.