Noni olabisi biography

One of the top leaders in the history of Black liberation, he became the first ruler of the independent nation of Haiti.
Noni Olabisi was a painter and muralist.
Olabisi was born in St. Louis in 1954 but left shortly after her mother died when she was 4.

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"Noni Olabisi (QEPD)"
Downtown LA, CA

In early 2022 I was commissioned by Silverstein Properties to create a unique mural alongside about a dozen other LA local artists on the 72nd floor of the US Bank Tower in Downtown Los Angeles. At about the same time, the iconic muralist Noni Olabisi suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. I couldn’t think of anything more fitting at that moment than to memorialize her at the highest point of LA to view down on the city that loved her so much. I asked the Silverstein team if they would allow me to paint her portrait and they immediately gave me the blessing to do so. The mural was painted with aerosol and acrylic on canvas that was adhered to the wall. I also requested to the team that if the mural were ever to be removed from this floor that they would instead donate it to a local museum or foundation so that it could be admired by the people of the LA. They obliged.

In March of 2023, Silverstein Properties held a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new lobby of the US Bank Tower and at that same event we donated the mural to the Altamed Fou

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Muralist Noni Olabisi, whose art galvanized South Los Angeles communities, dies at 67

“I wanted the wall to scream.”

Noni Olabisi, a visual artist whose provocative murals such as “To Protect and Serve,” with its powerful portrait of the Black Panthers, galvanized communities in South Los Angeles, has died. She was 67.

The cause of her death last month at her home in South Los Angeles is unknown, but the artistic community was shocked — especially as Olabisi had just completed one of the few urban artist residencies in South Los Angeles with Arts at Blue Roof. Lisa Diane Wedgeworth, executive director at Blue Roof Studios, had the difficult task of breaking the news to the network of artists, peers and collaborators who had just seen Olabisi’s most recent works.

The Room of One’s Own artist-in-residency program was created for female artists who live and work in L.A. City Council District 9. For Olabisi, who had an associate arts degree from Los Angeles Southwest College, the residency was a gift — albeit an anxiety-producing one, Wedgeworth said.

“Noni told me she didn’t kno

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Noni Olabisi

American painter and muralist (1954–2022)

Noni Olabisi (1954 – March 1, 2022)^[1] was a painter and muralist. Her murals include To Protect and Serve (1996), which depicts the history of the Black Panther Party and addresses the history of police brutality.^[2]^[3] Her first mural, created in 1992, was Freedom Won't Wait, painted after the acquittal of the officers who beat Rodney King and the violence that ensued across the city of Los Angeles.^[4]

Biography

Born in St. Louis in 1954, Olabisi lived in Arkansas as a child before her family relocated to Los Angeles.^[2] She began making art while attending Horace Mann Junior High School, and eventually earned an Associate Arts Degree from Southwest College in Los Angeles.^[5] Her first mural commission, from the Social and Public Art Resource Center, came about after she filled out a questionnaire for emerging muralists.^[2]

Olabisi's 1996 mural To Protect and Serve proved divisive; city stipulations on the mural that were "dangerousl