October 2021
Location: 2300 Richmond Highway
Richmond, VA 23222

Photographer: Katrina Taggart-Hecksher

In our trips around Southside with Mr. Mookie of Virginia Community Voices, we heard a lot about the history, beauty and assets of Southside, as well as its needs and obstacles to further growth. Mr. Mookie shared in particular the necessity of more abundant grocery stores, and access to fresh food. 

In addition to advocating for the addition of new grocery stores to the neighborhood, we talked about community gardening as a response to Southside’s food deserts, and learned about how that work ties into the larger greening efforts of Virginia Community Voices. 

One of the most beautiful pockets of Southside we talked about was Bellemeade Park, a densely planted community space that is used as a hub in the Bellemeade Green Street plan, and which hopefully will connect with the envisioned Bridge Park plans in time. 

The location of our mural site directly across the street from Bellemeade, in a heavily industrial area of Southside caused us to think about the ways spaces designed without human scale or ecological health in mind can be and are being reconsidered and reclaimed for healthier approaches to public space. Directly behind the mural site is an abandoned CSX railway that has become a forested buffer weaving between the backsides of industrial properties and through neighborhoods. The shift from industrial neglect to a de-facto greenway got us thinking about the broader transformation at work in and around South Richmond, and how that connects to different values and conceptions of what land is for and who it serves. 

Our research also turned up information about a number of highly-polluting power stations and businesses headquartered on and near Richmond Highway, including the recently closed Bellemeade Power station, and Spruance Genco Coal plants. Spruance Genco closed in 2017, and Bellemeade in 2020, but both were environmental justice disasters for decades preceding. This kind of history - one of institutional and systemic harm done silently to a community is often forgotten, and so we felt a calling to tell that story. The story of air quality and air pollution as a racial justice issue felt like it connected back to the central symbol of the protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder in May of 2020 - that of breath and George Floy’ds words: “I can’t breathe.” We wanted to tie this image back to the long-term health impacts of fossil fuel power plants placed in Black and Latinx communities. Finally, we drew inspiration from the phrasing of the Black Panthers 10-point program, which phrases aspirations in the format “We want ____.” These layers of meaning in language will be present in the mural as poetic phrases that transition between different images along the wall. 

The final piece presents a vision of industrial sites and landscapes not designed for human scale, human relationships or human flourishing being reclaimed and enlivened. This vision is made explicit by poetic text running through the wall giving voice to community desires and dreams.