‘Walkway Of Peace’ Collaborative Mural In Miami Supports Ukraine

MIAMI, FL — Whenever Nina Chepovska travels, she likes to book Airbnb Experiences as a way to explore the city she’s visiting.

Though the platform is known primarily for its vacation rentals, Airbnb users can also book unique experiences hosted by locals — salsa dancing, food tours, boat rides. Or, in the case of her recent trip to Miami, the opportunity to paint her own Wynwood mural.

“I wanted to do something fun, and I usually try out a different Airbnb Experience when on a trip,” Chepovska told Patch. “Wynwood is a cool neighborhood known for its art and murals, and I thought this would be a cool way to see it.”

The Seattle resident, who moved to the U.S. from Ukraine with her parents when she was 7 years old, isn’t an artist; she works as a recruiter for a tech company. She simply thought painting a mural in Wynwood would be a fun outing while visiting South Florida.

“I don’t even consider myself a creative person,” she said.

So, when mural artist Kyle Holbrook, who hosts the mural painting experience, asked her what she planned to create, she froze.

“I really had no expectations. I was kind of unprepared even with what I was going to paint. I had to make something up on the spot,” she said. “I should have thought about it before I arrived.”

Just two weeks into Russia’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine at the time, Chepovska decided to paint from the heart. Creating an homage to her homeland and a tribute to her family who remains there, she painted the Ukrainian flag surrounded by a brightly colored geometric design.

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“The Ukrainian flag was the first thing that came to mind,” she said. “With the invasion, obviously it was still very fresh in my mind.”

Painting the mural was therapeutic, she added. “Maybe healing is a better word. I felt really good channeling all the emotion and pain I had through art.”

The Ukrainian flag traditionally uses primary colors — yellow and blue — but Chepovska wanted to soften its appearance in her mural, working with Holbrook to choose colors that were “a little more pastel, a little brighter,” she said. “I’m happy that I chose brighter colors. I did it on purpose. I wanted it to look cheery, in a sense.”

Just two days after she painted her mural, Holbrook overheard people who were walking by it discussing the work. They pointed out the Ukrainian flag and talked about how they had forgotten about the ongoing war in Eastern Europe.

That’s when he knew he needed to organize a larger mural project with Chepovska’s flag at the center of it. He was moved by the stories she shared of her family in Ukraine and wanted to remind the community of the crisis overseas.

“I wanted to do something on a larger scale that can draw more attention to (the war). I was feeling like I didn’t want to be passively observing. I wanted to be doing something,” he told Patch. “I always try to use art to do something bigger than just paint a pretty picture. I think there’s such a power that public art can do to make a statement in society.”

Starting Wednesday morning, he’s offering a new Airbnb Experience to create “Walkway of Peace,” a 1,000-foot-long mural dedicated to Ukraine. In a symbol of solidarity, he’s inviting people to add their footprints, handprints and other images to the work.

“There’s space for hundreds of people to contribute to the block-long mural,” Holbrook said.

The cost to participate in the collaborative mural is $87 per person. All money raised through the Airbnb bookings will be used for the supplies to create the public art piece.

The property where the mural will be painted has been donated by Pinnacle Housing, a real estate development company. Holbrook and volunteers from Moving Lives of Kids Community Mural Project, the arts organization he founded, are donating their time to the “Walkway of Peace.”

Chepovska was surprised to learn about Holbrook’s plans inspired by her mural.

“It’s such a wonderful surprise. It’s really humbling that some little thing I did is making a bigger impact,” she said.

Now a U.S. citizen, she immigrated here in 2001, landing in Seattle with her parents. She’s grateful that she spent most of her early childhood in Ukraine and has many strong, fond memories of her time there.

At the same time, Chepovska says she’s “very Americanized” having spent the majority of her life in the U.S. She and her parents have stayed connected to their Ukrainian roots, though, even traveling to the country several times throughout her life to visit family and friends there.

It’s difficult living so far from their homeland, she said. “We’ve tried to hold onto our culture. There’s definitely a community here (in Seattle) of Ukrainians and Russians and other Eastern Europeans, but those communities are fairly religious, and our family is not. So, we never got engrained in those communities. … We try what we can to make sure we don’t forget where we come from.”

Before the war, she and her parents called her grandparents, who live in their hometown, Horlivka, each week. These calls have increased since February.

“Now, we call them more often with everything going on,” said Chepovska.

The violence is nothing new to her family, unfortunately, she added. Horlivka is in eastern Ukraine, not far from the Russian border. Her family spoke primarily Russian because of the proximity to Russia and the longtime influence of the Soviet Union.

While February’s invasion of Ukraine has rattled the entire country, the region where her family is from has been occupied by Russian-backed separatists for eight years.

“My grandparents have been living through political violence since 2014,” she said. “It’s not really new, just heartbreaking to see it spread to the rest of the country.”

Chepovska hasn’t seen them since 2012 because of the occupation and was forced to cancel a planned 2014 trip because of signs of impending violence and unrest.

“My grandparents basically said, ‘Don’t you dare come here.’ They were very worried. I cancelled my tickets and cancelled the trip,” she said. “It’s a good thing I did. By the time I would have gotten there in 2014, the area would have been occupied and coming in with a U.S. passport would have caused me a lot of trouble. It would have been a bad situation to be in. I probably wouldn’t have been able to come back (to the U.S.)”

The distance is difficult as the violence spreads and “the rest of the country is also now in ruins,” she said. “We can’t hug and comfort our family. Instead, we just stare at each other on Skype. It’s so silly. We just want to be there with them, but we can’t.”

Humanitarian aid isn’t able to enter Horlivka and other cities in that region of Ukraine because of the long-time Russian occupation, Chepovska added.

Now, as the violence escalates, she and her parents are raising funds to hire an immigration attorney to help her grandparents safely leave the country and move to Seattle.

With the war’s impact on her family and others in Ukraine, the “Walkway of Peace” mural in Miami is “a bright spot,” she said. “I never intended or thought my small, little mural on the sidewalk would do anything or make an impact…It feels good to leave something semi-permanent behind to represent Ukraine and show that Ukraine isn’t forgotten.”