One Face, 100 Stories
Compelled to amplify the message of the Black Lives Matter movement, alumnus Alex Scoloveno created this oversized mosaic of George Floyd, the African American man killed by a Minneapolis police officer in May. The 15' x 23' work of art consists of 100 portraits of slain civil rights activists, those killed in police custody, and victims of racial injustice. For Scoloveno MGSA’19, the project was also a long-overdue education about the history of the civil rights movement. The artist, who studied acting at Mason Gross School of the Arts, took a month to research and select the images. In constructing the mosaic, he laid out the panels containing the photos in his yard and climbed onto the roof of his house to get the proper perspective of Floyd’s emerging face. Scoloveno invited members of his Branchburg, New Jersey, community to participate in the project. He assigned volunteers a name and image and, after making an appointment to come to his house, had them place images in the mosaic—but only after each of the 40 or so participants had read and learned about the life of the person affected by racial injustice.