Stunning new Easton mural highlights clean air inequalities

A beautiful new mural just off St Mark’s Road may look serene at first glance but it conveys a hard-hitting message about air pollution inequalities.

Created by all-female collective Peace of Art, the piece on the side of the Thali restaurant facing Easton Jamia Mosque depicts a tree as the lungs of the Earth. On one side, the tree is thriving and as it nears a cityscape with smoking chimneys, it starts to decay.

“We wanted to highlight clean air inequalities,” explains Aumairah Hassan, one of the trio of artists behind Breathe.

“It highlights the issue of wood-burning stoves in Easton, which is – and has been for the past few years now – a bit of an issue where it’s been quite trendy to have wood-burning stoves in houses. That’s causing PM2.5 particles in the air, which are smaller particles that can filter through into the lungs. It’s an issue that not too many people know about.”

Manazzar Siddique works on the stunning new mural in Easton highlighting air pollution inequalities – photo courtesy of Peace of Art

Peace of Art was approached by RADE Bristol (Residents Against Dirty Energy) to create the mural as part of Vanguard and Toward 2030’s on-street project aligning art with sustainable conversation throughout the city.

The piece on the walk-through between Thali and the mosque just off St Mark’s Road took Aumairah, Manazzar Siddique and Safina Khan around seven days to complete. “It would have been quicker, but we kept stopping to chat to people,” laughs Aumairah, who adds that the artists were treated to cups of tea from the Thali team.

It was completed on Thursday, coinciding perfectly with a day of action against climate change in the neighbourhood.

“In our murals, we try to use things which reflect the community and the diversity of the community and the vibrancy,” says Manazzar.

“The colours that we use are quite vibrant and quite in sync with the area that we’re trying to represent.

“Another feature of the work is we have a geometric pattern which is quite a prominent feature running through the mural. This pattern is widely used in many traditions but in the Islamic tradition, it is particularly referred to as ‘the breath of the compassionate’.

“It produces a kind of visual representation of the inhalation and extending exhalation process involved in breathing so that tied in really nicely. And we also wanted to use the geometric pattern to represent the natural relationship we have with nature and physical order and the balance that’s naturally there.

“So on the one side, the pattern is very much intact and then as we move towards a cityscape, we’ve had the pattern break up and lose structural integrity to represent that kind of natural relationship breakdown that we have with our environment.”

Peace of Art, including fourth member Emily Richards, started out doing street art workshops at Baggator using paint leftover from Upfest. The collective has already created two other murals – one as part of the community art scheme underneath the Fox Road viaduct in Easton and another by Stapleton Road Station.

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Read more: Stunning street art painted underneath railway viaduct

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Speaking about the importance of art for environmental action, the group says: “ It is incumbent on us as a community to stand together to highlight and tackle local issues of clean air and the inequalities some communities end up facing more than others as a result of the pollution we wittingly and unwittingly impose on our fellow human beings.”

Aumairah Hassan says the response to the work has already been incredibly positive – Photo courtesy of Peace of Art

Safina Khan completes the trio of artists who created the new mural in Easton – Photo courtesy of Peace of Art

Aumairah and Manazzar say they also had input from the St Mark’s Road Community Group when exploring the issues they wanted to highlight.

They add that the response to their work has already been amazingly positive, with many people stopping by to talk about the piece and the issues it highlights.

Breathe has a hard-hitting message – photo by Ellie Pipe

Main photo courtesy by Ellie Pipe

Read more: New artworks unveiled at Stapleton Road Station 

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