A street artist in Boston has constructed his own small memorial to Trayvon Martin. Since the death of Martin over two years ago, America has still remained shaken, and many in the world are finding their own, sometimes small ways, of dealing. You could say the artist, Matthew Hincman, is adding a small word to the massive conversation that happened in the wake of the shooting and subsequent trial

What is the artist trying to say? Hincman is quite succinct in this description of the memorial on his website:

This site-specific sculpture depicts a cast-away hoodie sweatshirt lying on the ground, referencing the tragic killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, in 2012. Affixed to an abandoned lamp-post base in the shadow of the 1871 West Roxbury Civil War Soldier’s Monument, in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, STILL aims to provoke reflection on the legacy of racism, power, and privilege in the United States.

WBUR interviewed Hincman and discovered that he found the abandoned lamppost and was dying to leave his mark on it. “There’s no collective memory around those historical monuments any more,” he told them “Who do we memorialize? Why do we memorialize them in the public space?”

So he and his assistant placed the memorial without even asking permission first.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Hincman is somewhat famous for sneaking installation art into various public places. Here he discusses the philosophy behind the art in terms of an oddly curved park bench:

The art installation is gaining momentum on Twitter, with a few intrepid wanderers of Boston snapping their own photos of the memorial:

Side view of Trayvon Martin memorial, STILL 2014 by Matthew Hincman. pic.twitter.com/gXJj1cAGUA

— Meighan O'Toole (@meigs) June 24, 2014

Of course, not all memorial street artists are as subtle, small, or creative as Hincman. Memorials to Martin are becoming a global phenomenon. It’s certain Hincman is not the last to leave his mark.

Here is the memorial to Trayvon Martin on the apartheid wall in Palestine (cited by @kristianbailey in @EBONYMag) pic.twitter.com/zSGdsWW4qy

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) May 22, 2014

Image via YouTube.