What’s red, ubiquitous, and blue and captures the stymied political optimism of the mid-aughts?
There can only be one answer: Street artist Shepard Fairey’s image of Barack Obama, emblazoned with the word HOPE and distributed so widely in 2008—the presidential campaign sold more than 50,000 copies of the poster—that it became a defining image, not just of the Obama campaign, but of the era itself.
It was a success, though Fairey himself became entangled in legal issues around the image. He did not make candidate renderings in subsequent elections.
That changed this August when Fairey released an image of Vice President Kamala Harris. This one has a similarly heroic composition, though the tones—powder blues; a swipe of lipstick offering just a hint of red—are lighter and less textured, a bit less confident. It is overlaid with the word “Forward.”
Durham is now one of five cities in the country to host a Fairey mural of Harris. The 9’x16’ wheat-paste mural looms on the retaining wall of Ella West Gallery on Parrish Street (also known as Black Wall Street). The installation is a collaboration between gallery founder Linda Shropshire and Wyatt Closs, whose LA-based company Big Bowl of Ideas is behind the five-city mural project. The two have been friends since a student government camp in middle school.
On October 17, the first day of early voting, downtown was lively with civic energy and, incidentally, establishment Democrats.
Outside the county’s main library, the line was a 20-minute wait deep. Outside Ella West Gallery, there was a DJ set, cupcakes, and a postcard-writing station; midway through the afternoon, a car convoy with Tim Walz and Bill Clinton drove by on its way to Lyon Park for a private event. Later in the day, Hillary Clinton was also scheduled to give a talk at DPAC.
Earlier this year, in March, long before a presidential run was on the table, Harris made a stop at Ella West Gallery on her “Investing in America” tour.
“I got a call from a 202 number on a random Monday,” Shropshire says, “and there was sort of a pause, and then [the caller] said ‘Are you with Ella West Gallery?’”
Two hours later, Shropshire says, a group of aides surveyed the gallery and let her know that Harris was considering making a stop at the business. Later, Shropshire was notified that it had been selected.
After Harris toured the gallery—“The first thing she said to me was, “Linda, I’ve been reading about the gallery, and I’m so proud of you,” Shropshire says—she met Shropshire’s 86-year-old father, who had taken the train from Charlotte.
Harris also held a press conference with Gov. Roy Cooper in the plaza area outside Ella West. This is where the mural is now; bookending a historic stretch of downtown that once signaled the promise of Black prosperity.
The other four murals are also in battleground states: Louisville, Kentucky, Harrisburg Pennsylvania, Macon, Georgia, and East Las Vegas. Closs, the organizer of the project, points out that art can reach people in a way that other methods—like an inundation of mail flyers and text messages—just can’t.
“This speaks differently to people, and that’s kind of the point,” Closs says, as a Beyonce remix plays in the background. “This is just one of the many examples in the next few weeks of the ways that art can pull people in and be a force for advocacy.”
In a way, Fairey’s art remains an apt avatar for the moment. In the years after Obama was elected, Fairey stated that he felt the administration had been a disappointment, particularly regarding the president’s use of drone strikes. Hillary Clinton did not get a rendering from him in 2016, nor did Joe Biden in 2020.
But while the word “Hope” had the political air of something imaginative and wrung out of sermons, the word on Harris’s rendering reads more like a grim clapback to the possibility of another Trump presidency. It’s drawn from one of her campaign mantras: “We are not going back.”
Not going back is a compelling enough mantra: returning to leadership from Trump, who, with the aid of Project 2025, has become increasingly emboldened to steamroll democratic norms and champion mass deportations and internment camps, would be catastrophic.
“There was an iteration of this that said ‘Forward, not backward,’” says Closs. “In many ways, it was a more direct version of what he was trying to say. But in the end, it was about focusing on these more positive aspects and moving forward.”
Looking up at the mural, it’s hard not to be nostalgic for the last time Fairey issued a candidate image—a time when the electorate’s faith in facts was sturdier, basic issues like reproductive rights were not up for debate, and the Democratic party capitulated to Republicans less and campaigned more on things to hope for: healthcare for all, a Green New Deal.
On Parrish Street, though, with less than two weeks to go until Election Day, the energy is high. Several Black women pose in front of the mural for photos, capturing a piece of history.
“I am so excited to vote for her,” Shropshire says. “I think for our country, we are ready for something different. We are ready, not only to move forward but to be normal again. We are ready for joy.”
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