# The mural that walks you into the next neighborhood > Two Chicago artists are painting viaducts so Bronzeville, Chinatown and Pilsen stop feeling like separate worlds. - Title: The mural that walks you into the next neighborhood | Shortify - Summary: Two Chicago artists are painting viaducts so Bronzeville, Chinatown and Pilsen stop feeling like separate worlds. A viaduct is only a border if nobody makes… - Keywords: chicago, public art, murals, community, race relations, news, local, mural, walks, next, neighborhood, Chicago Sun-Times - Source: Chicago Sun-Times — https://chicago.suntimes.com/murals/2026/09/11/chicago-murals-bronzeville-chinatown-consuela-hendricks-angela-lin - Published: 2026-09-11T16:00:00+00:00 - Read time: 2 min - Topics: chicago, public art, murals, community, race relations, news, local ## A wall that used to divide Under the CTA Red Line viaduct at Cermak Road and South Clark Street, a new mural marks the line between Bronzeville and Chinatown. It is the first of three. ## Viaducts are borders In Chicago, a viaduct often decides where one neighborhood ends and the next begins. Dark, cracked and unwelcoming, they quietly tell people to turn around. ## Three communities, one project Bronzeville is historically Black, Chinatown historically Asian, Pilsen historically Latino. Social and physical lines keep them apart even though they sit next to each other. ## Who is behind it Consuela Hendricks and Angela X Lin co-founded People Matter and lead it together. They want the murals to pull residents across those lines on foot. > We can walk into each other's communities and learn. ## A generational goal People Matter, founded in 2019, sets itself the task of ending racism in three to five generations. It works through community organizing, housing advocacy, youth education and the arts. ## Breaking Community Bubbles That is the name of the mural project. The bubble is the neighborhood you never leave, and the murals are meant to puncture it. ## The first one is finished Painted this summer on the south wall of the Cermak Road viaduct, on the Bronzeville and Chinatown border. The artists call it "Soul". ## A face split in two A Black woman's face fills the wall. One half dissolves into flowers, sparkles and a purple background. On the other, her black hair turns into sunflowers. ## Mirror, moss and gold Swirls of broken mirror lead the eye to a tree draped in Spanish moss. Strings of gold sparkly paint run down the wall along the cracks. ## DuBois at the bottom Along the base, words from W.E.B. DuBois take up double consciousness, the experience of holding both a Black identity and an American one. ## A charge to the viewer On the far left, a quote from Hendricks asks people to act rather than wait, and warns what happens if they do not. > Let bigotry die in our generation or the next generation will inherit the burden of its sorrows. ## Thirty kids with brushes Hendricks designed the mural and directed the work. Lin, in Hendricks' words, made a lot of it happen, and more than 30 children from People Matter school programs painted it. ## Painting on a broken wall The viaduct itself needed repair. The whole mural is acrylic, with pieces of mirror set in for texture and reflection. ## Kintsugi on concrete Lin took the gold cracks from kintsugi, the Japanese practice of mending broken pottery with gold lacquer so the break makes the object more valuable, not less. ## Enhance it, do not hide it The artists decided the decay stays visible. Rather than paint over the damage, they made it the most eye-catching part of the wall. > The infrastructure for a lot of these viaducts is falling apart. It's probably not going to get fixed. ## Key takeaway A viaduct is only a border if nobody makes it worth walking through, so paint it into a doorway instead.