"Ode To Censorship" mural - Aaron Peterman and Guillermo Gómez Peña - Providence, Rhode Island - Murals on Waymarking.com

This expansive text mural designed by Aaron Peterman is based on "Ode To Censorship", a poem by Latinx performance artist and writer Guillermo Gómez-Peña. It is painted on the northeast side of the 95 Empire building and best seen from Aborn Street. Black lettering on white fields on a black background spans the multiple building facets and reads:

We, the artists & intellectuals, famous & unknown.
We, mud people, snake people, tar people.
We, bohemians walking on millennial thin ice;
our bodies pierced, tattooed, martyred, scarred;
our skin covered with hieroglyphs & flaming questions.
We, the witches who transform trash into wearable art.
We, Living Museum of Modern Oddities & Sacred Monsters.
We, vatos cromados y chucas neo-­-barrocas.
We, bad boys & bad girls over 50.
We, the Hollywood refuseniks, the greaser bandits & holy outlaws of advanced Capitalism.
We, without guns, without Bibles.
We, who never pray to the police or to the army.
We, who never kissed the hand of a bishop or a curator.
We, who barter and exchange favors & talismans.
We, who still believe in community, a much stranger and wider community.
We, the artists & intellectuals who still don’t wish to comply.
We, who talk back in rarefied symbols & metaphors against the corruption of formalized religion & art.
We, critical brain mass; spoken word profética.
We, the urban monks who pray in tongues & rap in Esperanto.
We, who put on hats, masks & outrageous wigs to shout:
‘You just can’t take my art away.’
We, who dance on the edge of a crater against the rhythms of the times.
We, going crazy to remain sane; literally dying for new ideas; performing against all odds.
We, who suddenly freeze!
[pause]
Standing naked, right in the center of the stage or the street, with the words carved on our chests:
‘Performance artist: will bleed for food’
‘Obsessive artist: will die for one idea,’
We continue to talk back, talk back, speak up & make art.

-Guillermo Gómez-Peña

The work was commissioned by AS220, a non-profit community arts organization based in Providence, Rhode Island. The piece is on the back side of the 95 Empire Street building, one of their live/work spaces in the city.

For more information about Guillermo Gómez-Peña, read this interview.

For an exploration of the first lines of the poem, read Sincerely, Sweet Potato.