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Artist Loring Cornish closed his art gallery and starting working on an outside exhibition in Baltimore after the fatal shooting of Walter Scott at the hands of White police officer Michael Slager. The stunning exhibit featured dolls that he painted Black, hanging from trees–an obvious racial disturbance meant to cause a gut reaction.

“I wanted to make a statement. I wanted to show people exactly what’s going on with a figure of something that I’ve been feeling. It’s pretty much death. We’re being killed like innocent babies,” he said. “Who should get shot eight times?”

“I am in mourning for all of the black men that are dying needlessly, and the United States of America is doing nothing about it. And it seems like we can do nothing about police brutality,” he told Baltimore NBC affiliate WBAL.

This bold display certainly got the message across, but of course many residents found it absolutely horrifying, which is how Black people feel about police officers killing us everyday.

Cornish said he hung the dolls as a visual representation of what some Black Americans are currently feeling, given the number of Black men who have died because of alleged police violence.

“We’re feeling this. This is not something we should just gloss over. We’re actually feeling death in our community,” he said. “We are being lynched, killed and murdered legally in the United States.”

What do you think about this display? It’s rather uncanny that it debuted in Baltimore two weeks before these protests around Freddie Gray’s death erupted.

*UPDATE* Baltimore Buzz: Peace Prevails; Alleged Witness Claims Freddie Gray Injured Himself & More  was originally published on hellobeautiful.com

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