Visiting Berlin, Germany, I met up with a friend and fellow Howard University alumus, James Shields. James, who goes by the name Creative Shields, is an artist from Oakland, California. His work, up until now, consisted of mainly painting on canvass and graphic design.
We first managed to link up during my trip back in Amsterdam. I served as muse for his first attempt at freestyling some raw street art. With a few spray cans he nabbed for cheap at an outdoor market, we went down to what artists call the Hall of Fame at FlevoPark.
A little after dawn, James completed his first piece – a beautifully figured black woman perched atop of clouds, her hair blowing in the wind. He explained that he felt compelled to create positive images of black women to counteract so many negative images prevalent in today’s media. Therein lied James’s mission, illuminating our true beauty.
Berlin, one of the world’s most popular hubs for graffiti and street art, would go on to serve Creative Shields again as a natural canvass. There, he continued his quest to depict the black female form along the underpassings of local graffiti spots like Mauer Park and abandoned factory buildings.
However, as news spread of the riots in Ferguson due to the killing of unarmed Michael Brown, Shields insisted on a radical shift in his work. He started throwing up images of black kids adorned with crowns accompanied by a range of quotes like “America, stop killin black kids!” “Don’t go, they’ll shoot you too!” and “What do you want to be when you grow up? ALIVE,” in efforts to raise awareness of what he sees as systematic terrorism targeting black males in America by police.
To get a little more background on the art and large-scale pieces throughout Berlin, I decided to go on a local arts tour given by Alternative Arts Berlin. Led by a fellow art enthusiast named Rob, we set out on a two-hour trek around the city to explore some of Berlin’s most famous graffiti and street artists who have helped to give the city such world recognition. Splashed on the sides of everyday buildings, bridges, highway underpassings and train stations, we saw some of the greats, from the internationally famous 7UP crew, United-Kingdom based Banksy and Italian artists Blu and Alice Pasquini.
While street art is a fairly modern genre, it is an outgrowth of graffiti, an art form born from the economically disadvantage and oppressed youth in New York City during the 1970s, which came to fulfill the need to possess power and control over their environment. Street art embodies personal emotion and often draws awareness to social issues, as opposed to graffiti which takes on the sole purpose of obtaining fame by tagging of a name or street name.
Rob gives cred to 1980s New York superstar Jean Michel Basquiat as a pioneer for the art form. The African-American artist was famous for his inventive paintings that infused African art with modern forms and typically married text and abstract imagery on canvass.
Basquiat was, according to Rob, unfortunately lumped into the category of graffiti artists during the beginnings of his work. Yet, his contribution was larger than that; in actuality he helped to lay the groundwork for what we now refer to as street art.
The tour ended with a workshop in which everyone was able to create their own piece of street art in a studio using spray paint, canvass and stencils. We were asked to pick a stencil that personally inspired our creativity. Of the few black heroes and heroines sprinkled in the bunch of famous celebs, I decided upon the late Tupac Shakur. He was someone whose radically expressive music and persona was to me, similar to street art.
His music and idolatry still live on today through the hearts of children who were not even born at the time of his decease some eighteen years ago.
Shakur and his music represent the passionate cries from the frustrated and disenfranchised black youth today; a voice of social realism, an educator and some would even say-prophet.
I would never have imagined that I would come to Berlin and experience such rich education on the idea of African pride, Ancient Egyptian history, street art and a deeper appreciation for Tupac Shakur. There are some lessons I learned, that transcend borders.
