4 Black Girls & 1 Klansman Connected To The Same Cross

Artist

Halim Flowers

Artist bio

Halim A. Flowers is an artist, a writer, a designer, and an activist committed to criminal justice reform. Halim was arrested at the age of 16 and sentenced as an adult to two life sentences in the District of Columbia. His experiences as a child in the adult prison system were filmed in the Emmy award-winning documentary “Thug Life In DC”. In 2005, he started his own publishing company SATO Communications, through which he published 11 books. On March 21, 2019, Halim was released from prison after serving 22 years. Halim has used his voice and art to advocate for change in the documentary “Kim Kardashian: The Justice Project”, and speaking around the country as an Ambassador for the Represent Justice prison reform coalition. In 2019, Halim was awarded the Halcyon Arts Lab and Echoing Green fellowship awards. His current artistic focus is in his visual arts PhotoPoetry practice. In 2020, he was awarded the Eaton DC Hotel Artist-In-Residency.

Visual Arts 2020 Contest

Title

4 Black Girls & 1 Klansman Connected To The Same Cross

Medium/Genre

Painting

Artist Statement

Painting is about historical bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963.

How it fits into contest

In this piece, I paint the images of the 4 Black girls that were killed in the bombing beneath the scripture of Matthew 18:1-10, juxtaposed from an image of 1 Klansman beneath the scripture of Numbers 25:1-18.

This shows how the spiritual battle between good and evil can lay claim to the same Bible, but use them for opposite forces of righteousness and wickedness. The scripture tells us that children are sacred, yet white supremacists use scripture to justify their evil of bombing churches and burning crosses.