This Deep Desire

This Deep Desire, designed by artist Danny Simmons and painted by Gabe Tiberino, is located in the Fern Rock neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Simmons describes the work in an artist statement:

“The collage this mural is made from is titled This Deep Desire. Its core is about a longing for an attachment to a lost or hidden history that one can be rooted in. While this type of desire can be found in all peoples around the world in this moment the emphasis of African Americans connecting to Africa as a motherland particularly in this moment of Black Lives Matter in the here and now but that these lives mattered even when they were involuntarily separated from their people their histories and their countries all over the continent of Africa. I created this abstract artwork to represent the desire to recapture what was taken from those not only in America but those scattered and enslaved throughout the African diaspora.”

Included adjacent to the mural is the quote: “Art changes lives, it opens a child’s imagination to infinite possibilities . . .” – Danny Simmons / Rush Arts Philadelphia