A Pennsylvania-based artist is vowing not to be silenced after two of his public murals were vandalized with racist and antisemitic graffiti in cities 3,000 miles apart.
Kyle Holbrook, a Pittsburgh artist known for his murals commenting on social justice, told KDKA-TV that the vandalism in Oakland, Calif., and Miami would not deter him at all.
“You can’t erase history, you can’t erase culture, you can’t erase me,” he said.
Holbrook is a renowned muralist with more than 800 works across 49 states and 43 countries, according to a profile on the website for the MLK Mural Project, where he is the executive artist.
Also, Holbrook has over 300 works in Pittsburgh and has had his art displayed at the 2024 Paris Olympics, said KDKA.
Holbrook’s 12-year-old mural in Miami of notable Black Americans, including baseball legend Jackie Robinson, was vandalized with two swastikas and a racial slur, reported Channel 7 News in Miami, which said the graffiti was discovered by a 7-year-old boy on Sunday.
Holbrook told the Miami station that the mural was created as a “sense of pride” for the community through a “dedicated mural to the Negro League teams that used to play there, the Ethiopian Clowns. There is a lot of other historical imagery on the mural.”
Out in California, Holbrook had been working with high school students and the community on a three-city mural series “designed to champion access, belonging and visibility for students with disabilities,” according to KRON-TV.
More than 2,000 people in the Oakland community came out to help create the murals, Holbrook told KDKA. He said the vandalized mural there was defaced with similar racist and antisemitic graffiti that was sprayed on the Miami mural.
“For this to happen to me with two different murals within two weeks … this is something that’s going on in society,” Holbrook told WPXI-TV in Pittsburgh.
Christine Mohamed, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Pittsburgh chapter, said the vandalism was “vile” and “devastating” to see.
“We stand in full solidarity with artist Kyle Holbrook and his unwavering commitment to speaking truth through art,” she said in a statement.
“Attempts to silence messages of justice and inclusion through racist and neo-Nazi vandalism are not only vile but deeply alarming,” said Mohamed. “It is devastating to witness our country becoming so divided by hatred toward marginalized communities.”
Holbrook said the Oakland graffiti has been covered up and he hopes to return to Miami to help repair that mural.
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