Samaria Rice (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
Tamir Rice’s mother feels like her suffering is being compounded by the fact that her son’s high profile death has caused artists all over the globe to treat his name and image as a form of public property.
According to Cleveland.com, his mother, Samaria Rice, says she lives in constant fear of running into another reminder of her son’s violent death because of how often he is referenced by creatives, filmmakers and social commentators.
For Rice, the work of artists like Shaun Leonardo, who is based in New York and whose planned exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art this summer was canceled, is a perfect example of an homage that’s left the grieving mother feeling more triggered than honored.
“This is so messed up,‘’ Rice said after finding out that Leonardo planned to include an image based on the surveillance video of her son’s death.
After the cancellation of his show in Cleveland, Rice’s legal counsel sent the Afro-Latin artist a cease and desist letter, asking him to not to exhibit the drawing based on her son’s death and also remove it from his website.
