Chicago street artist Chris Devins envisioned a lasting tribute to the hip-hop superstar. But Ye's antisemitic rants changed his perspective.
during a college-football game in Jacksonville, Fla. Another appeared in red paint on a Jewish grave about 30 miles north of Devins’ mural: “Kanye was rite.”
He didn’t want to broadcast acceptance of any discrimination. He reminded critics that his wife is Jewish. She, too, erred on the side of the First Amendment. Ye’s diatribes had appalled them both, he said, but neither felt right about erasing the mural. Rather, a protective instinct flared. When someone spray painted “TRASH” over Ye’s suit, Devins rushed to restore his portrait.“I don’t think we should be censoring anything just because someone is acting ridiculous,” he said.
The owner of the Lake Street building, a Jewish man, wanted the mural gone. One October afternoon, Peterson grabbed a ladder and a bucket of black paint and, over the course an hour, darkened his portrait of Ye into a silhouette. “When I was doing it, I was almost a little weepy,” Peterson said. “It felt like it was the hard thing to do, but it was the right thing to do.”The image — along with a cellphone video someone shot of Peterson on his ladder — went viral.
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