Saginaw has a new mural! The “Shine Bright Saginaw” mural. What a pleasantly literal name. A towering fluorescent behemoth, now dominating the downtown skyline. Supposedly, it’s the second largest mural in the world. I’m definitely its first biggest hater, and I won’t be apologizing.
It’s pure visual fentanyl.
Here’s the story: One man had a vision, based on a grain silo mural he’d seen elsewhere. He hated the loathsome rusty silos and wanted to spruce them up. He got his buddy involved, and the two men raised $750k in private donations from corporations (thanks, Dow Chemical) and small donations via GoFundMe. They hired a Spaniard, Okuda, who calls himself a “citizen of the world,” to design and paint the thing, which he did in four weeks. He’s very proud of it, ranking it as his, like, favorite work ever. It’s also his largest work, and I can’t blame him for feeling accomplished—it’s massive, shiny, monumental in scale, and certainly achieves his vision.
The problem is that it’s a glorified Corporate Memphis infographic. You know the style: blocky, blobby, barely human figures, flat shapes, bright pastels, and neon. They always seem to be wearing outsize bell-bottom pants. Once you’re aware of it, you see it everywhere. Originating in the big tech firms of the 2010s, it’s been the default aesthetic of neoliberal girl-boss marketing teams for a decade now. The best example, the “platonic ideal of Corporate Memphis,” features a brown woman in a hijab with a hook for a foot explaining the concept of “solo polyamory.”
Okuda claims his work is inspired by multiculturalism, but it’s really diversity masking dehumanization. Diversity without context means nothing. A mishmash lacking a nucleus. A hodgepodge of glaring colors, faceless faces, formless bodies, and meaningless shapes.
The mural achieved its mission: covering up rusty silos with candy kitsch loosely signifying multiculturalism. He told Euro News, “The use of colour… especially in the bodies and geometric faces represents multiculturalism: all races in one, all flags in one.”
The real ideology though, parsing between the lines, is dominance and intimidation. You will let this mural burn your retinas, and you will like it.
The “Dirty Sag” some call it. I took the highway up. At a rest stop, a big purple box dispensing free Naloxone (an antidote for opioid overdoses), right next to the vending machines selling pop, snacks, and ice cream.
That clued me in to the general state of the area—depression, misery, drugs, and crime, with well-intentioned people trying to help. Trying to save people from overdoses, but doing so with the most performative, useless gestures possible. A free Naloxone vending machine, just in case someone ODs in their car when they stop to take a leak heading to vacation up north.
There’s no parking at the mural, it’s down a side street with a rusty train track and barbed wire fences. Rusted out cars sit in vacant lots next to the $750,000 mural in a semi-vacant, half-used industrial area. More of a place you’d go to meet your fentanyl dealer than a place you’d look at art. The mostly black residents of Saginaw didn’t seem too amused by the white people parking their cars to stop and gape at this towering behemoth.
The mural and the Naloxone vending machine are the same thing—good intentions and herculean efforts treat symptoms, not causes. People are overdosing? Put free Naloxone machines everywhere. Saginaw is rusted out with post-industrial malaise? Overpay a Spanish artist to fly in and paint over the rust!
The mural is pure fentanyl, of course. That’s the better analogy. The most concentrated, artificial, visual opioid you’ve ever seen. An ugly sort of band-aid masking deep, deep pain.
I hate criticizing people for making things, I really do. But my disposition comes from a real desire to improve things in Michigan and an impatience for things falling short, for always painting over root causes.
This mural does nothing to help the people in the area. It only serves to build up the egos and credentials of those who made it. Make no mistake, the guys who organized this mural want to help—they just have no idea how, no way to get to the real problem, so they throw on some white primer and cover it up with neon paint.
Art is important for society and culture, but art will not save Saginaw. Especially not bad, pandering, holier-than-thou murals like the Shine Bright Saginaw mural. This place is suffering, and the money could be spent in so many better ways to help or, at the very least, used to hire a Michigan artist instead. This mural isn’t a celebration of Saginaw’s bright new future. It’s a tomb, a memorial, a numbing agent that is cloaking the pain of decay.
Bobby Mars is an artist, alter ego, and former art professor. Follow him on X @bobby_on_mars.
