TheRedline

I have collected Blu Murphy’s work for years. Long before there was a film, there was a portrait: a child, painted with care, with a red line across the eyes. That line is not decoration. It is a record of a decision made on paper, decades before that child was born, about what their neighborhood and their schooling were worth.

Redline exists because those stories deserve to be told with the resources, care and reach that legacy demands. Too often our history is told cheaply, or told about us rather than by us. This film is owned by Noir Arthouse, LLC, and presented through The Black Art & Culture Project initiative, so that the people inside the story keep authorship of it.

I am committed to educating the next generation and to building lasting wealth in the Black community. I am a husband and a father. This work is for the children watching.

I see Black people as art. I am a mixed media artist, educator and photographer based in Washington, D.C. I combine striking black-and-white photography with acrylic paint or fabric, and upcycled frames as canvases. My artwork not only features my students — it celebrates and honors them as living pieces of art. My art is about them; the photography is them. The subject matter is always them.

I like to connect them, placing them in Black history. There’s something beautiful about connecting the past and the present and teaching them visually in that way. I use a collage method to connect my students to figures and happenings of the past, to teach Black history while also commenting on the current state of the community. This infusion of past and present, rooted in the culture, sheds light on stories that are often forgotten, hidden or untold.

My work is a tribute to the Black community — its essence, beauty, magic and resilience. I hope it inspires and informs viewers, while also speaking to and for the youth and educators, especially those working in Title I schools.

The Redline series asks the viewer to connect to these pieces in a tangible way. The materials are limitless — leather, collage, textiles, fabrics and photography — textures that represent my subjects as individuals and as urban culture. The red line of quilted fabric that covers their eyes is a visual representation of the blinding educational trap redlining creates in low-income Black communities.

The upcycled, hand-painted or fabric-wrapped frame speaks directly to the emotional trauma of disenfranchised people who so often feel discarded, unnoticed and deemed invaluable. My art showcases these individuals — their stories and experiences — as the masterpieces they truly are.

None of this leaves the classroom alone. My thanks to Terry Dillard Jr. and the crew who filmed with such care, to the staff and families of Perry Street Prep, to my students above all — and to executive producer Ian Swain, who believed in this work and made it possible to put it in front of the world.