Art plays a critical role in how we remember George Floyd 

Just before dusk set in on Sunday, I visited George Floyd Square. The Minneapolis air was chilly but not freezing, so I was able to spend some time walking around the intersection and the sidewalks stretching out on each side. 

Many of the elements that were first erected after Floyd’s murder in 2020 remain — the giant fist in the heart of the intersection and at the end of each of the four blocks, the murals, the synthetic flowers, the messages of grief and remembrance, the plants, the names painted on the street, and the gas station transformed into a street art memorial called the People’s Way. Cup Foods (which boasts a “Unity Foods” sign out front) remains and was open, as was the Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center, which was hosting programming. There are new businesses as well, like the cozy Bichota coffee, where I stopped and got a chai tea. 

I wanted to get a closer look at Jordan Powell-Karis’ central fist sculpture and the plants that surround it, but there’s no walkway at the center of the intersection. I stood for a moment on the street taking it in, but then a car drove past and I hurried to the sidewalk. I had the same experience at other points during my visit. George Floyd Square Square is a memorial site but it’s also a thoroughfare, and those two identities don’t work well together. 

Last week, the City Council rejected a plan recommended by city staff that would restore D Line and Route 5 bus lines, make street improvements, add bike lanes, and maintain a “flexible” design that would allow for closures for public gatherings. Prior to the City Council meeting, the George Floyd Square Community Visioning Council released an alternative proposal for the square, one that called for an additional year to “listen, reflect, and decide together before any major changes are made.” On Dec. 5 the City Council voted for a pedestrian-centered plan proposed by council member Jason Chavez that would restrict vehicles except for local use and maintain access for emergency vehicles. 

Memorials, like many art forms, are a way for a society and culture to mark history, to define what’s important, and to make sure we don’t repeat mistakes. It’s been four and a half years since Derek Chauvin held his knee on George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds during arrest, resulting in Floyd’s death. The rage and pain that followed in both peaceful protests and unrest here in the Twin Cities and nationally became a moment of reckoning around the role of police in our lives as well as enduring racism and white supremacy. As we look toward the fifth anniversary next May, the question becomes: How do we remember and repair? 

When time passes, and current events become historic memory, slippery shifts happen. Certain details rise to the forefront and others fade away. The narrative evolves, reshapes, reframes, lingers and resonates in different ways.

In a picture book by Shannon Gibney with illustrations by Leeya Rose Jackson, “We Miss You, George Floyd,” Gibney finds a place for the impact of George Floyd’s death on young people. 

Gibney uses both the “we” and “I” pronouns in the story. The “we” emphasizes collective voice for a generation of young BIPOC people — especially in South Minneapolis — who felt those events acutely. When she uses “I,” she hones in on the particular journey of one young girl navigating the historic events. 

The narrator notes Floyd was a man who “looked like us and talked like us” and lived in her neighborhood. She hears about what happened on the news, and soon visits the memorial site at George Floyd Square. 

Jackson’s illustrations portray many of the elements of the square — from the fist sculpture to the Cup Foods sign. There’s an image of a child laying an offering in front of the mural created by Xena Goldman, Cadex Herrara and Greta McLain, along with other artists, and an illustration of Seitu Jones’ temporary billboard sign. Jackson’s illustrations are warm and dreamlike — a repeating set of wavy lines run throughout the pages like a journey of thought.  

Besides offering a resource to young readers who lived through Floyd’s death (and those who will live through deaths of other Black people killed by police in the future), the book enters George Floyd and George Floyd square into the canon of children’s literature. It exists as a record of a perspective that often gets lost amid other narrative angles that get more prominence. 

Literature, like physical memorials, has that power to set down a path for understanding truth. Another book that came out this year, “Art and Artifact: Murals from the Minneapolis Uprising,” served as a companion to the exhibition of the same name, curated by Amira McLendon, that closed at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery on Dec. 7. The catalog, edited by Leesa Kelly and Howard Oransky, features artworks painted on billboards covering storefronts during the unrest, and essays that provide context and thinking around the works and the importance of their preservation. 

In the essay “What are We Doing to Safeguard Our History?,” Leslie Guy writes: 

“The truth is, objects that survive support the stories the powerful want to tell about themselves and others. Artifacts are the physical manifestations of the values, agendas, and narratives often used as projections of power.” 

Artists have been helping to make meaning and understanding about what happened in 2020, and they will continue to play a vital role in holding the memory. We’re going to need that memory, and we are going to need deep listening, as the city makes plans for what happens next. 

Sheila Regan

Sheila Regan is a Twin Cities-based arts journalist. She writes MinnPost’s twice-weekly Artscape column. She can be reached at sregan@minnpost.com.

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