This story is produced in collaboration with the Institute for Public Service Reporting as part of our continuing Civil Wrongs Project.
Next time you’re walking down South Main Street in Memphis and find yourself in front of one of the city’s longest-standing art galleries, look down. You might learn something.
Miniature paintings by artist Ephraim Urevbu are now embedded in the sidewalk. Inside them are QR codes that tell chapters from American history.
At the installation’s unveiling last June, Zerrick McGaughy tested out the concept with his 9 year old son, Zander.
"It's a great idea for the future, for real. Because people can just be walking and just walking and scan it and read about it as you walk," McGaughy said.
Zander added: "It's like it shows people's history. It's not just artwork. It's just like history."
When Urevbu emigrated here from his native Nigeria, 39 years ago, he was thinking more of the American dream, not American history.
"I still see the anguish on my mom's face when she discovered I decided to go the route I chose to go to," Urevbu said.
That is, he wanted to be an artist.
"That was why I made a decision: I have to get out of the country," Urevbu said. "If I need to do this I got to go as far away from my family as possible."
But when he arrived, he found a new obstacle. And that, he says, was about history.
"Race became a major focus for me because prior to coming down here, I never experienced what it was like to be a Black man," he said. "And the struggle to understand the dynamics behind all of that was really very, very, very, very, hard."
Urevbu’s modernist style of art features bright colors and thick paint, often in bright reds, whites, and blues. But a few years ago, he launched his Naked Truth Art Project, designed to bring attention to the uglier side of American history.
"It's so crucial that we know exactly the underlying causes of all the turmoils and the chaos that is happening right now," he said.
One series of abstract paintings name atrocities, like the Memphis Massacre of 1866 or the Trail of Tears. Another shows three Ku Klux Klansmen against the backdrop of an American flag. He says he wants to start conversations about race and history.
"Now you can use the art as a third party, right?" Urevbu said. "I don't need to talk to you. You watch the art and you interpret it the way you want to interpret it, and maybe somewhere down the line we can have a genuine conversation."
Researching these episodes and turning them into art led him to publish a book titled, “The Naked Truth Art Project: An American Story in Black and White.” He wanted to share his story back in his native Nigeria. Also, to pose a question:
"Do you know what happened to your ancestors when they arrived on the shores of America?" he asked.
He says he wanted to bridge that knowledge gap. Now the stories are available for Memphians as well. Point a camera at the sidewalk and one can learn about the Freedom summer of 1964 or Jim Crow laws.
For Urevbu, this is just the latest in his ongoing effort to teach history.
"This project, as I worked on it over time, is really taking its own path. I don't know what is going to be tomorrow," he said.
But with history etched in the sidewalks, he hopes that decades from now, this vital information will still be accessible to the masses.
The Urevbu Contemporary art gallery is at 410 South Main Street. The artwork with embedded QR codes are in the sidewalks around the gallery. You can also see the artwork at nakedtruthartproject.com and hear more of this conversation with Urevbu on the Civil Wrongs podcast.
