The week of Sept. 15, the Campus Parkway Corridor on the University of Washington’s campus underwent a bold change. In just around eight days, the monotonous gray of the walls was covered in almost every color of the rainbow.
The transformation is part of MexArt 2025, the largest Mexican and Mexican-American mural project ever created in Washington state. Presented by the Consulate of Mexico in Seattle and the City of Seattle as part of the MEXAM Northwest Festival, the two-year open-air installation gathers ten artists around the theme of migration and belonging. It also supports outgoing Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Many Hands Art Initiative, which is a part of his One Seattle Graffiti Plan, and uses public art to revitalize city spaces and amplify community voices.
Beyond the city funding and logistics, MexArts 2025 is very personal. Each mural tells a story shaped by the artist’s own journeys of leaving home and building identity in a new place.
Karla Nahmmacher, the liaison for cultural affairs at the Consulate of Mexico in Seattle, said the team wanted the community itself to define the message. The city provided the walls and equipment through the One Seattle Graffiti team, and the consulate helped with logistics and funding, but the creative direction came from the artists.
“We invited the community to see it happen,” Nahmmacher said. “[The art is] not something that just shows up. We wanted to bring awareness to the artistry and the process behind it.”
She said the theme for the artist-lead project grew out of the current climate for migrant communities. To choose the artists, the consulate gathered a few of the artists who had participated in MexArt 2024. These artists in turn chose which other artists they wanted to work with this year for MexArt 2025.
Walking east to west under the overpass, the first mural visible is “The Knot of Freedom,” painted by artist Rene Julio.
The Knot of Freedom is painted in shades of red, and features hands bound with rope, the faces of two children, and eagle claws.
“The eagle represents freedom in this country, but here, it’s holding people down.” Julio said in a recent interview.
Born in Mexico, Julio migrated to the United States in 1999. For 19 years, he was undocumented. He lived in constant fear of deportation or getting arrested, even if he did nothing wrong. However, that fear, and the perseverance it created for Julio, shaped the mural’s imagery.
“For me, that’s my approach to immigration,” he said. “It’s the rough way to see immigration.”
Julio added the two children after starting the piece.
“Those kids are the ones being affected the most,” Julio said. “They see everything. And one day they’ll ask, ‘How could you think that was okay?’’ Behind the children, Julio painted broken stars, representing how the American dream is inherently broken.
Julio is a trained academic painter, and studied visual arts at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, graduating in 1996. However, Julio had never worked with spray paint. He had to learn to use it due to the quick time frame of the project; when spray paint touches the wall, it dries immediately.
Learning another medium along with nine other artists was like an act of solidarity. While Julio normally works alone, he said working with the other artists was a great experience, as everyone was very supportive and helpful with showing him how the spray paint worked.
Now a U.S. citizen, Julio still thinks about friends who remain undocumented.
“That fear is still there, especially right now with anti-immigrant policies,” Julio said. “This mural is for them.” He hopes viewers stop to reflect rather than just pass by. “It’s aggressive, but it makes you think,” he said. “That’s what I wanted.”
A few walls down from “The Knot of Freedom” is “El Abrazo.” It was painted by Gerardo Peña, who goes by Periko the Artist. For him, MexArts 2025 was a chance to reclaim the immigrant narrative through collective creation.
Periko’s mural, in shades of purple, blue, black and white depicts a mother and daughter hugging, surrounded by monarch butterflies. The mother and daughter’s arms are painted in a skeleton style as an ode to Day of the Dead.
“I always use monarch butterflies to symbolize migration and immigration,” Periko said in a recent interview.“Monarch butterflies migrate throughout the Americas and tend to return around this time of the year, during Day of the Dead. I use them to represent our ancestors, for people who lost their lives migrating, or gave up their dreams in search of a better life.”
The core of Periko’s mural, the embrace between mother and child, comes from his own life. Periko left Mexico when he was 5 years old and spent 27 years in the United States before he was finally able to return after receiving his green card this year.
“When I went back, I felt like I was embracing my family that I hadn’t seen in over 27 years,” Periko said. “But I didn’t feel like I was just hugging them. I also felt like I was embracing my country.”
Coming back to the United States was difficult for Periko; rather than feeling inspired, he felt lost. However, the MexArts project pulled Periko out of that feeling of emptiness.
“Working with all these other artists really helped me get out of my artist block,” Periko said. “It re-inspired me. In a weird way, painting that mural was symbolic for me, like getting back out there and getting back into my life.”
For Periko, the project “Migration and Belonging” was a lived experience, not just a theme.
Nahmmacher noted that the murals have continued to attract attention on social media. People regularly tag the artworks on Instagram, and the QR codes mounted beside each piece are scanned throughout the day by passersby who want to learn more about the project and its origins.
For Julio and Periko, the project is more than art. It’s a personal record of fear, loss, belonging and renewal painted onto the concrete walls of the Campus Parkway Corridor.
“I feel free when I paint,” Julio said. “If I won the lottery tomorrow, I’d still do murals, I’d just do them everywhere, for free.”
Ayeda Masood is a student at the University of Washington.
Cover Photo: Gerardo Peña’s mural “El Abrazo”, created for MexArt 2025. The mother and daughter are surrounded by monarch butterflies, a symbol of migration and memory in Peña’s work. By Ayeda Masood.