“The Torch” (Ben Chilli’s Bowl Mural)

Alley adjacent to 1313 U St, NW

Artist: Aniekan Udofia with Mia Duval (2017)

Note: The mural has changed a good deal since its 2017 dedication.

Visual description

The mural stretches from the alley U street entrance of Ben Chill’s Bowl, back about 100 feet downthrough the adjacent alley. The central figure, Harriet Tubman, on the highest part of the wall,  is carrying a lantern  (the eponymous “torch” in the title) to light, in effect, the route towards freedom. Spiraling off and below here, are other notable African American trailblazers,  who have embodied a spirit of defiance and resistance., These include “”Prince, Muhammed Ali, Go-Go Legend Chuck Brown, Singer Roberta Flack, Radio Personalities Donnie Simpson & Russ Parr, Actress Taraji P. Henson, Rapper Wale, Journalist Jim Vance, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, former DC Mayor Marion Barry, and comedians Dave Chappelle & Dick Gregory.” The mural culminates,ing  at the far right, with an image of President in Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama, the heroic figures who are widely understood as ‘carrying the torch’ of liberty, passed down from Tubman.   The red and white stripes of the American flag are wrapped around the Obamas in a celebratory and patriotic embrace. 

Background

The Torch, commissioned by Ben’s Chilli Bowl, is probably the most photographed mural in Washington DC, and is very much on a well followed itinerary that includes Ben Chilli’s Bowl and the nearby African American Civil War Memorial . The mural evokes another, arguably lost era in the history of DC, a time of exuberance when the city felt that one of their own was long last in power and that Black DC was finally being honored and celebrated. 

Ben’s Chilli Bowl was celebrated as one of the Obamas’ favorite eating places in DC, and came to symbolize the first couple’s  embrace of the city’s Black heritage and of its non elite everyday culture. 

Interpretive Notes

The mural joyously captures the energy of African American history, appropriately located next to a beloved site closely associated with the nation’s first Black president. Harriet Tubman, clad in a flowing green cloak, presides over the whole assemblage, as a kind of ancestral figure blessing and illuminating all who walk forward in her footsteps.  The green garment may evoke the lands she navigated to bring hundreds to freedom, as the Black Moses, and may also evoke the beloved, remembered motherland of Africa itself. 

Tubman, known in Black lore as “Moses,” the greatest of the prophets,  is  in a sense, is figured not only as passing the torch and lighting the way for the other figures, but alsois in a sense prophesying all those who come after.  Perhaps , as a founding ancestress, she is singing a song, a Spiritual, that sings into existence her spiritual descendants, and the whole mural can be read as a visualized song of praise and triumph, consistent with the liturgical tradition of the Black Church.

It should be noted that alleys occupy an important space in the city’s African American history.  Many Black families resided in alleys, especially during the Jim Crow era when occupation on major streets was highly restricted, and alleys were often the site of energetic musical and performance culture. This cultural history is brilliantly captured in Eastman Johnson’s masterpiece, the 1859 painting “Negro Life in the South,” which depicts a Black occupied alley space in downtown Washington DC.   The artist, Udofia,  has, in effect, re-embued an old alley space with the historical energy of Black cultural creativity, bringing  alley culture in effect back to life.

Prompts for Close Looking:

• Consider why the Harriet Tubman figure is shown at the top of the mural, above most of the other figures. Why do we need to crane our necks up to see her? What do we discover in effect when we step back to see Tubman and her relationship to the other figures?

• Look closely at Tubman’s torch, from which the painting draws its title, and think about the visual and narrative work the torch does for the rest of the painting. 

• Compare “The Torch: with the 1859 Eastman Johnson painting “Negro Life in the South”. How does the Udiofa mural re-capture the historical energies found across the decades in downtown  Black occupied alleys? How does Udiofa  challenge the racial, white supremacist assumptions that dominated Johnson’s vision of urban Black life?