Let's Stop Raising Monsters

Themes: parenting, mental illness, social ills

“Let’s Stop Raising Monsters” is painted in a bold blue and yellow color palette and is composed of two figures, a young girl in a monster hoodie and a monstrous, horned creature donning a leopard headpiece. Behind the figures is the titular text “Let’s Stop Raising Monsters,” written in three styles: an all-caps block font, a classic graffiti-style, and red dripping lettering reminiscent of a horror movie poster. These font styles blend traditional muralism, graffiti, and popular culture, bringing together elements of Pilsen’s old-guard artists and the new generation, who lean heavily on graffiti stylings. In a piece on parents and children, this cross-generational move is imbued with meaning. The lettering and young girl are the work of Chicago muralist Henry Gonzalez, who works under the moniker GAPE ONE. The leopard/monster hybrid is the product of graffiti writer and artist Antonio Hernandez, who works under the name EKTA GRAFF. The piece was painted in 2021 on the side of a miles-long railroad retention wall lining 16th Street—a hub for Pilsen muralism and home to over 100 public artworks.

The image of the young girl is fractured into two— an asymmetrical slash divides her her eyes from her mouth. Her expression is altogether innocent, but the detached eyes can be read as devious or harmless. Coupled with the hoodie, a garment stereotypically linked to gang members and urban violence, Gonzalez seems to suggest that the girl stands on the precipice between good and evil. In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Gonzalez described the figure as “an innocent little girl” wearing a “little monsters hoodie to show where she could be going in life.” Much of Gonzalez’s work is centered on parenting. The father of two young daughters, Gonzalez has experienced firsthand the importance of good parenting on a child’s outcome. The message to “Stop Raising Monsters” is a warning to the Pilsen community to treat their children with kindness, love, and compassion, lest their innocent offspring transform into a beast.

EKTA’s monster-leopard hybrid is described by Gonzalez as an “adult monster,” and can be read as the adult version of his innocent child, the grotesque, animalistic, beastly outcome of a bad upbringing. In the same Chicago Sun-Times interview, EKTA offers up an alternate reading. He hopes to communicate to the viewer that children deal with their own anxieties, problems, and fears. In other words, “They got monsters inside.” In light of that idea, his figure can be read as a child who was never given the space or opportunity to work out their own demons and has become monstrous and hard as a result. The inverted use of blue and yellow in EKTA’s piece directly links the work to GAPE’s young girl. The fusion between the natural, wild leopard and the tough, sinister monster suggests that monstrous people are both real and imagined: products of their environment (bad parenting, violence) and stereotyped figments of society’s imagination. “Let’s Stop Raising Monsters” asks us all to have a little more compassion for those around us, particularly the next generation.

This description was written by Lily Strailey, Notre Dame Class of 2022.