Madres de Plaza de Mayo, by Amy Whiten

Street muralist, illustrator, educator, and artist Amy Whiten works under the moniker Syrkus. She runs Recoat, an organization focused on urban art. After she was commissioned by Amnesty International to create Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a spray-paint piece, she reflected on the opportunity: “Western culture so rarely values older women, and I enjoyed painting them as the heroic, angry, and brave women that they are.” The Madres de Plaza de Mayo are the Argentinian mothers of the “disappeared”—those kidnapped, killed, and missing in the 1970s and 1980s at the hands of the country’s brutal military dictatorship. In 1977 these mothers started gathering at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, wearing white headscarves, to share information, protest, and remember.