Lay Your Weapons Down, Williamsburg, NYC, 2015

Lay Your Weapons Down is a four-story high mural of a multiracial couple embracing, situated on Berry Street in Williamsburg, NYC. The spur-of-the moment wall was inspired by Faith47’s ongoing photographic series of couples kissing on the dance floor in Evol nightclub in Cape Town. “The mural speaks to the notion of home not being a place, but a feeling of human interconnectedness,” says Faith.

The couple’s faces are obscured, leaving the exact nature of their intimate moment to the audience’s imagination. Typically for Faith, the piece has multiple meanings for the artist too. “It’s about the profound nature of connectedness between two people; the fragility of human emotion and the power of touch; the breaking down of race; as well as the need for humans to abandon violent behaviour and find strength within our vulnerability.”