‘I’m just a truth teller.’ How Chire Regans’ art heals and advocates for equality
On a corner at the edge of Wynwood, Chire Regans paints under a blue tent, the thumping of a boom box blasting Miami bass guiding her hand.
Her canvas is nothing glamorous — just a brick wall painted black — as is her laborious process of stenciling letters one by one. With each letter, a name forms, metaphorically bringing the person to life. Make that back to life. Take a closer look and some names stand out: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Laquon McDonald, all etched into the American consciousness as examples of police violence. Others — Ashley Francois, Isaiah Solomon and King Carter — might be lesser known but victims of gun violence nonetheless. All are now dead.
The mural — entitled “Say Their Names” — comes from a phrase repeated again and again in the aftermath of last spring’s grim events. Regans, who is known in art circles as VantaBlack, explains it “has come about from people not understanding the magnitude of those affected by gun violence and reducing people to numbers, especially Black and brown people.”
An artist with a passion for activism, Regans, 41, uses her work to draw attention to gun violence — but also to heal families who lost loved ones. This mural on an outer wall of the Bakehouse Art Complex building near Wynwood is just the latest example of addressing the issue she views as an “epidemic.”
“Nobody’s immune to being a victim of gun violence,” Regans, who lives in south Miami-Dade, says. “This is not a them problem, it’s an us problem.”
Regans’ focus on gun violence began shortly after the murder of Carter, a 6-year-old who was fatally shot in February 2016. Carter’s killing stuck with her; she knew this could’ve easily happened to her own son given that both children were then about the same age. Even more heartbreaking, she had seen a Facebook Live video of the boy’s father whose pain and anguish could be felt through the screen.
Watching “a Black man show this type of emotion touched me,” she recalls.
So Regans did what she does best: create. Armed with a white pencil and black paper, she drew King, launching what would become a series of portraits honoring victims of violence. The more she produced, the more grieving relatives reached out. With each image, families regained a part of themselves that they believed was gone forever.
“Chire is the reason us mothers have hope,” Leatha Bush, 56, says, holding back tears. The loss of her son Jack Brown III in 2012 sent Bush on downward spiral that at one point had her contemplating suicide. “When she draws your child’s picture, it’s like life being brought back to you.”
More than just helping families, the portraits countered the criminalization of Blackness, says Serena Saul, the mother of the 15-year-old Solomon who was killed while attending a wake in Liberty City.
When young Black boys in the inner city die from to gun violence, people try to justify their deaths as if “he was doing something wrong [or] he was a gang member,” Saul, 37, says.
The fatal shooting of 8-year-old Jada Page not even three days after Solomon’s death quickly pushed her son’s story out of the spotlight, Saul recalled. Though deeply saddened by both losses, she felt as if the world no longer cared her son — that is, until Regans’ portrait.
“His name is being kept alive,” Saul says.
With more than 200 portraits already completed, Regans has formed a sorority of sorts where mourning mothers can become whole thanks partly to her work. Many have even referred the artist as one of their own, with Saul calling her a “sister” and Bush considering her an “angel.” The praises elicited from the mothers at just the mere mention of Regans’ name speak to a palpable level of empathy present in her portraits, said Oolite Arts president Dennis Scholl.
“Chire is the one person who, through her portraits, lets the family know that loved one is not forgotten,” Scholl says. Oolite, which presents the Ellie Awards to Miami artists, just honored Regans with its inaugural 2020 Social Justice award.
Regans, however, wanted to do more. To further the impact of her portraits, she set about trying to find a stationary place where the likes of Solomon, Brown and hundreds of others could be enshrined in perpetuity. When Bakehouse acting director Cathy Leff was approached with housing this mural in June, she agreed immediately.
“We’re really interested in art that reflects the community, that engages the community and that speaks to the community,” Leff says.
By August, Regans had begun painting with help from various contributors — including Leff and relatives of the some 547 people being memorialized. Her goal was simple: provide a safe place for Black women to grieve.
The mission stemmed from conversations with mourning mothers who told her that, “because I’m a sista, I’m expected to get over this, move past it, to not talk about my child so much,” Regans says. “... I just want to remind them that it’s okay to do all those things.”
Regans intentionally includes a wide range of victims. Some, like Trayvon Martin and Ahmaud Arberry, died after being fatally shot by vigilantes. Others, like Floyd and Taylor, were killed by those sworn to protect and serve. Regardless of the perpetrator, the deaths suggest a perception that Black life is cheap — much like the view that enslaved Africans were chattel.
“We need to talk about when police take the lives of people, they take the lives of Black people at a higher rate than any other group of people,” Regans says. “That’s the conversation we need to focus on.”
Regans included Solomon, King and others killed in random shootings, citing factors like poor housing and poverty as catalysts for these acts of violence in Black and brown communities that “are segregated because of systemic racism,” she says.
“If I’m surrounded by people that look me, we all trying to eat, resources are being stripped from communities purposefully, what’s going to happen in that community?” she asks rhetorically. “They’re going to target the people around them because that’s where their access is.”
The heaviness of the subject can sometimes bring Regans to tears. That’s why she considers the Miami bass such an integral part of her creative process.
“There’s something about just the vibrations that are very calming for me,” she says. “I can lose myself in the music and lose myself in the work.”
The result is a space where people can come, learn and walk away with a fresh perspective. Scholl compares it to Washington’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In each, sheer magniture inspires introspection.
“I thought to myself ‘Boy this really is a moment of reckoning, a moment to stop and take stock of who we are as a nation,’” he said. “That’s what art can do. Art can make you pause. Art can make you think very, very hard about an issue in a different way.”
There’s no denying that the mural can cause discomfort. The more than 500 names inscribed on the wall aren’t just names; they’re people who lived, laughed and loved; people with friends and family who will never get to see them again; people who should still be here today. Regans will be the first to say that the discomfort happens to be the point.
“Oftentimes people ask, ‘Why choose this subject matter to focus on?’” she says. “I’m just a truth teller... and the truth isn’t always pretty.”
This story was originally published December 11, 2020 at 9:31 AM.
