Justice for Our Lives
Artist Oree Originol successfully takes art to the streets
The portraits are simple but dignified.
Aiyana Jones, the seven-year old girl killed in a raid conducted by the Detroit Police Department in 2010, regards us casually, her braids clasped at the tail with daisy-shaped hair clips. Alex Nieto, who was shot fourteen times by San Francisco Police in his (now gentrified) Bernal Heights neighborhood in 2014, looks past us — catching sight, it seems to me, of a future now foreclosed. Oscar Grant and Walter Scott are smiling; they look like fathers (which they were). Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin are not smiling.
These simple black and white portraits make up a collective, the digital portrait series “Justice for Our Lives,” by Oakland-based artist Oree Originol.
Returning from an annual vigil for Oscar Grant near Fruitvale Station in 2014, Originol felt galvanized: “That left a big impression on me. I came back from that vigil thinking I had to do a portrait of [Oscar Grant].” (Grant was fatally shot on New Year’s Day in 2009, by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer who had mistakenly reached for his gun, not his taser; his wrongful death catalyzed protests across the U.S.) Originol has made all his posters available for download so that they might be used “at demonstrations, in classrooms, art galleries, businesses and anywhere else that will promote conversation and action against police brutality and racism,” as his website suggests. They can often be seen wheatpasted on the walls and telephone poles of the city of Oakland.
Oree Originol is thin and tall, his lengthy black hair loosely tied up in a flowing bun. His childhood friends thought his ears too big, hence the nickname “orejas” (Spanish for “big ears”). He is wearing a plain white tee, sweatpants, and gray Nikes. He has an eagle’s face.
We decide to conduct the interview on a small, flat bench in a small corner of the house, just outside Originol’s bedroom. Behind us sits a large, wooden table stacked with “Justice for Our Lives” portraits, printed out in colored paper. Near the table’s edge (far too close, it seems to me), rests a small, translucent paludarium. A tiny, rainforest blue frog breaths quietly beneath a branch inside. Across from us, high up on the wall, hang two of Originol’s paintings. Composed with a “geometrical style,” the pieces are — to a layman like me — fun to look at. The first is tawny-colored, an incongruous but pleasing cityscape built alongside a Cheetos-patterned volcano; the second I’d describe as “cool” blue. A large, open window frames us, breathing over our backs.
A brown, eager chihuahua falls through the window, presses up against Oree’s knees, then scuttles off, yapping.
Below are excerpts from our conversation.
JB: Why do you think your portraits resonate? Why do you think people use them?
Originol: I think the thing that resonates with people off the bat is the impression of an aesthetic consistency, where if you come across an Alex Nieto portrait that’s just a black and white design, it’s like okay cool Alex Nieto this is for Alex Nieto, okay. Then somewhere down the line you come across another black and white portrait of Michael Brown: “oh, that style looks similar to the Alex Nieto one.” Maybe there is a connection and then you get to see more faces pop up; then it registers that there is a series of portraits out there that is coming from somebody and all these people are people that have been killed by police. You have black people, brown people; you have disabled people; you have trans people.
JB: What struck me about your portraits is they don’t look like…well, I guess what I’m saying is, they look natural.
Originol: Yes. I wanted to represent them in a dignified way and to push back against the narratives that are usually portrayed of them. For example on the media where they are thugs or bad people, that maybe they deserve to be killed.
JB: But also the videos. In those videos — I’m thinking of the Walter Scott video in particular — what you see is him being terrorized. That’s what everyone sees. But your portrait gives us an alternative way of looking at Walter Scott.
Originol: Exactly. Where you don’t see him as someone who was a victim that is in fear of his life, that got shot down from the back like an animal, you know? When you see him with a happy face, it’s like “oh, this was a father, he was a son, he was a brother, and he was someone that mattered to our community.” That is one of the key conversations that I have with the families when I produce these images. But not all of them are smiling. And there are different reasons. For the most part, there is just no picture of them smiling — I work with what I have. But the preference is always to find one of them smiling. If I’m not able to achieve that, they are still being portrayed in a dignified manner.
