Those entering D.C. on South Capitol Street will see a large, new billboard near Audi Field featuring an oil painting depicting the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. News4’s Jackie Bensen talked to the creator of a project that’s been met with some controversy.
Drivers entering the District via South Capitol Street will now see a large billboard on the left near Audi Field.
It features an oil painting that depicts the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Painter Don Perlis’s work, entitled “Floyd," is an unflinching look at the moment burned indelibly into the conscious of so many last summer.
One police officer kneels on George Floyd’s neck, two others pin him down further.
Floyd’s eyes, frozen in anguish, gaze out toward the viewer.
To one side, a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
The billboard will be in place for a month.
Cellphone video of the moment depicted in the painting brought people into the streets across the US, and around the world.
It was a summer of outrage that swelled the ranks of the Black Lives Matter movement.
That movement became the target of far-right and neo-nazi groups, who descended on the Nation’s Capital after Donald Trump lost the Presidential election.
"This District," says Corinne Basabe of the George Floyd Justice Billboard Committee, "was an ideal spot for the artwork."
The group has set up similar billboards in New York and Los Angeles, but has struggled to place one in Minneapolis, the city where Floyd was killed.
Two outdoor advertising companies have already turned them down.
