Artist busts of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and John Lewis ride to Union Square in New York – See images here

Busts of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor – who became icons of the Black Lives Matter protests after being killed by police in 2020 – as well as one of the late Congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis have been erected in Union Square in New York.

The public art exhibit, titled “Seeinjustice,” is supported by the Taylor family, the Floyd family (and their charity We are Floyd), as good as John and Lillian Miles Lewis Foundation.

Artist Chris Carnabuci began carving the works during the civil unrest last summer.

“I wanted to capture a historic and meaningful moment,” Carnabuci told Artnet News. “I want art to provide an environment for civil discourse where we can discuss our differences and maybe even come to an understanding of each other’s points of view. “

Originally, the artist started with Floyd, creating a statue just 40 inches high. He shared it with his friends Andrew Cohen and Lindsay Eshelman, who were in the process of founding Confront art, an organization to promote diversity and education by working with underserved communities.

“Seeinjustice”, the group’s first project, was born out of a chance meeting between Eshelman and Terrence Floyd, George Floyd’s brother.

“I showed the George Floyd statue to Terrence Floyd, and he started to cry, and he said ‘this is the most beautiful sculpture of my brother that I have ever seen,” Eshelman told Artnet News . “People were putting up murals, people were selling George Floyd things, but no one had ever come in the family before to ask for their permission. And Terrence said ‘you make it bigger.'”

Chris Carnabuci, BRÉONNA in Confront Art’s “Seeinjustice” exhibition in Union Square, New York. Jason Woody from California poses with the monument. Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty Images.

Carnabuci is best known for his 22-foot-tall Burning Man sculpture Mariposita (2019), of a woman emerging from a giant egg. (Currently, Mariposita is on display in his driveway in Cold Springs, New York, where he shocks his Airbnb guests.) But the artist specializes in computer numerical control, or CNC machining, using factory tools programmed by computer software to sculpt individual layers of a model into sheets of plywood that he stacks in alignment to create the final sculpture.

“I learned to use the CNC machine on my own about 10 years ago,” said Carnabuci. “I thought it would be really cool to get layers cut out precisely and stack them on top of each other to achieve a sculptural interpretation of a 3D model. “

Chris Carnabuci, JOHN LEWIS in Confront Art’s “Seeinjustice” exhibition in Union Square, New York. Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld / Getty Images.

Each of the “Seeinjustice” heads is based on a combination of photographs of each subject, converted to three dimensions by Daniel and Rodman Edwards.

“We start with a 3D model and reverse engineer it by cutting it into different layers, then cutting the layers on the CNC machine, sanding them, lining them up, gluing them into blocks and putting them together,” Carnabuci explained. “You have to use an accurate measurement even to a thousandth of an inch, because if you make a mistake, the sculpture will look chunky or elongated.”

Each of the “Seeinjustice” statues has 200 individual layers, and Carnabuci was able to cut about five layers per hour. On site, working with glued sub-sections, it took about an hour to assemble each one on site in the park.

FLOYD, a statue of George Floyd created by artist Chris Carnabuci for Confront Art’s “Seeinjustice” exhibition in Union Square in New York. Photo by Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images.

He installed the trio of FLOYD, BRÉONNA, and JOHN LEWIS in front of the Union Square Equestrian Monument dedicated to President George Washington, a bronze statue of Henry Kirke Brown dating from 1856, making it the oldest sculpture in the New York City Parks collection.

A nod to the history of public monuments, Carnabuci painted each work with metallic bronze paint. Family members, hip-hop musicians and other social figures added inscriptions to the base of each portrait.

“Seeinjustice” can be seen in Union Square at the George Washington Statue, 5 Union Square East, New York, from October 1 to October 31, 2021.

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