Aliyya Swaby Photo
Adae in his Chapel Street studio.
New Haven painter Kwadwo Adae gave Lady Justice a few extra swords after a state police officer brandished a gun in his direction at a minor traffic stop.
After spending the last year protesting police violence against the black community, the painter and art instructor suddenly feared for his life at a stop sign close to home at the end of the year.
Twelve days later, on his court date, Adae finished a 48-by-36 inch oil and spray paint rendering of Lady Justice (pictured in the above photo). She stands nude with four arms brandishing aikido swords and just one holding a balance scale weighed down on side with a vibrant blue and yellow heft.
The model had asked him to portray her as Lady Justice. He readily agreed. In the summer of 2014, the model had moved to Missouri. That August, Officer Darren Wilson “gunned down” Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the first in a series of citizen-police encounters that would spark a nationwide Black Lives Matter movement.
Adae doesn’t usually produce “politically-charged work.” He paints enormous floral murals; he paints curvy nudes; he paints abstracts with swirls of color and prickly textures.
At first he wondered why he was depicting Lady Justice, when justice seemed to elude black victims of police brutality. “Why am I making something that doesn’t apply to me?” he wondered.
Then the killings of Brown, of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, of Tamir Rice in Cleveland charged him up — enough to drive him to contribute to the national discussion around police brutality with his art. With each new development — another person killed, another officer not indicted — he added more paint to his lady. And he joined New Haven and New York’s “peaceful protests” last winter to show solidarity with communities most victimized by a flawed justice system.
The process of creating Lady Justice was cathartic and “constructive,” he said.
On the back of the canvas, Adae began writing down the names of black people killed by the police over the last few years, as a way to memorialize each individual. “The painting won’t be finished until the names on the back of the frame are completely filled up.”
Then in December, Adae had his own tense encounter with the law.
Driving from his house in Bethany to his downtown New Haven studio Dec. 18, Adae didn’t make it 100 yards before being pulled over by an officer.
The plainclothes state cop insisted he had not stopped at the stop sign. Adae disagreed. The officer approached the car, with his gun drawn.
Adae asked why his gun was drawn during a routine traffic stop. The officer responded that he didn’t have his holster on him that day. He charged Adae with failure to halt at the stop sign and failure to produce proof of insurance, according to the ticket. Adae said his insurance was up to date, but he didn’t have the papers with him. The officer arrested him and released him on site, explaining that the arrest would be on his motor vehicle driving record, but not on a criminal record.
“No One Would Know Why”
Adae was shaken. He poured out his reflections in the viral Facebook post:
I was arrested and released onsite today by a plainclothes police officer who approached my car with his gun drawn for an alleged running of a stop sign. (Yes, a stop sign.) The reality is that this man with no uniform, no badge, and no name, could have easily chosen to execute me today…and no one, including me, would have ever known why.
I know what would have happened though, I’ve seen the narrative in the news countless times. My family and loved ones would be devastated and spend their precious time searching in vain for answers that would never bring me back or heal their pain. The white police officer that killed me would say he felt threatened by my terrifying blackness concealed in my handsome good looks and a vintage tuxedo, and he would be moved to desk duty and never see jail time. A few midwestern accented newscasters would be completely butchering my name for a couple of weeks on the 11 o’clock news. Perhaps my death would add a couple drops of fuel to the anti-police brutality movement for a week or two and then life would go on.
When you are a black man in these United States, getting pulled over and seeing a gun drawn is analogous to having a near death experience. I am truly grateful to have a court date instead of a death certificate today. When I see you next, expect a longer hug, a tighter handshake, and don’t be alarmed if I tell you how much I love you and/or how much you mean to me.
Then he got to work.
Adae returned to his painting between the arrest and the court date, to add the finishing touches. He finished painting Justice’s feet, touching up the background, and adding finer details to the scale.
The four swords Lady Justice wields “accentuate the fact that it’s more punitive measures than actual evaluating of right and wrong,” Adae said. “That rings true in having to see a gun for an alleged traffic infraction.”
Adae, who is black, has been pulled over at least once a year for the last four years. He has been harassed by police officers. But seeing the gun made Adae feel like he was part of a “hostage negotiation … If you don’t stay really calm, you can end up dead.”
In all the incidents he had memorialized on the other side of Lady Justice, the altercations “start with something small,” like a 12-year-old playing with a toy gun or a man selling loose cigarettes. “It’s never anything that seems to equal the taking of a life,” he said.
A $25 Pass
Adae received an “overwhelmingly positive display of love and support” on his Facebook posting.
Meanwhile, he showed up in Superior Court on Dec. 30 to face his charge. He inquired with the prosecutor about the police report, which “described a different encounter than what happened.” The report said his attitude was “fair/poor” during the encounter and didn’t mention that the officer had drawn his gun, Adae said.
After Adae told the prosecutor what happened, he was given the chance to clear his record if he donated $25 to the crime victims fund, “which is what I did.”
With a “clear conscience and clear mind” in the new year, he made a few artistic resolutions — to continue to contribute positively to the community by creating public art and teaching others to create. And, of course, to keep writing names on the frame of Lady Justice. “Who would have been the one to write my name on the back of the piece?”