In painter Don Perlis’ re-creation of the killing of George Floyd, an officer kneels on Floyd’s neck and two other officers further pin him down, as another officer in the background looks away from the scene. Floyd’s eyes, frozen in anguish, gaze out toward the viewer.
The oil painting, alongside a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” — is amplified on a 16-by-48-foot billboard on La Cienega Boulevard and Holloway Drive, near the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood.
The billboard, which went up Monday, is from a group called the George Floyd Justice Billboard Committee. Its goal is to keep Floyd’s death front and center amid a seemingly never-ending news cycle, which most recently included a shockingly different police response to Trump supporters who violently broke into the nation’s Capitol. In late October, the group ran a similar billboard in New York’s Times Square, with a quote from the Dalai Lama: “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” The West Hollywood billboard will remain up for four weeks, and a replica is up in Atlanta.
“People need to remember how [Floyd] died and the same emotion people had then,” said committee chairwoman Corinne Basabe, who is an artist and TV producer. “People should be very concerned that justice is done.”
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