Listening to Hear

Listening to Hear by artist Jaq “Jingle” Masters is located in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This mural offers visually surrealistic illustrations of an eclectic garden of ears embodying butterflies and gramophones representing bloomed morning glories. The satin bonnets in the distance and zebra-like background patterns denote hair braiding customs and thoughtfully expresses the sweetness of femmehood through the lenses of black queer culture. The QR code [in the mural credits] leads to a spotify playlist of inspirational songs chosen by a survey of black femmes with the prompt, “name a song that makes you feel heard”.

The mural is part of Small Walls, a Mural Arts Philadelphia program created to amplify emerging and underrepresented artists. It provides them the opportunity to create and lead their first mural project, while amplifying the artist’s creative expression and skills. The murals are meant to be on display for a year, with the intention to rotate each site to another artist to provide additional opportunities. For this first (2024) iteration, three artists who have worked with Mural Arts in the past couple of years as artist assistants were selected through an RFQ and selection panel. Featured artists included Jaq “Jingle” Masters, Ibi Padrón Venegas, and Yuliya Semenova.

To celebrate the installation of these three Small Walls murals, an artist talk event was held at Paradigm Art Gallery on May 21, 2024. The artists had the opportunity to discuss their experiences with the production of their murals and their dreams going forward.