Meet the artists behind the powerful Black Lives Matter artwork being shared across social media

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Dani Coke posted her first illustration on her Instagram.

She had seen a lot of people taking his quotes and words out of context, and she wanted to set the record straight.

"My message was that he wasn't this passive peacemaker, but he was a radical disrupter who challenged the status quo," she said.

Her illustration received a wave of responses, and it made Coke realize that "people are more willing to listen to the hard things if they're pretty."

So she set out to make beautiful things about challenging topics.

Coke's illustrations have covered everything from systemic racism to allyship.

Coke said she always has her ear to the ground, listening to what her in-person and online communities are sharing. She picks a topic that resonates with her, and she spends hours doing research. Finally, she illustrates.

Coke has been creating these infographics for months, but her account quickly skyrocketed to 413,000 followers.

"It's overwhelming on one side, it's the need to educate on the other side," she told Insider. "And it's the grief that I'm all trying to balance at once."

Coke said that last week was extremely challenging. Her most recent post addressing racial injustice was posted in mid-May. Since then, she's been posting Instagram videos about turning action into awareness.

"I have always had a passion to talk about these things. People just haven't always been willing to listen to me," the 25-year-old said. Coke described a documentary she made in college about her experience with racial injustice within her own community, which wasn't well-received.

For Coke, Instagram has become a medium where people want to listen.

But she also wanted to make sure that the listening led to change. "I felt that, inadvertently, I was encouraging performative action," she said.

Her Instagram videos highlight the inward, outward, and upward actions people can take to spark change.

"It makes me really excited to know that there's change happening in people's hearts and amazing conversations taking place in people's homes," Coke said. "And I really believe that's what's going to spark a real lasting change."

For the past 10 years, Ciara LeRoy has focused on words.

"Writing is a big part of my life, and words are a big part of my life. That's how I process the things that I'm going through," LeRoy told Insider.

As a professional lettering artist, LeRoy incorporates messages into her art.

She started embroidering a couple of years ago because it added new texture and new dimensions to her art.

She incorporates themes of justice and joy into her work.

"As a Black woman, there are two words there that make life more difficult in this country and in this world," LeRoy said.

LeRoy calls attention to the experience through her art. Her most recent piece features a cycle of outrage that the Black community witnesses after countless incidents of police brutality.

"We get upset about something that happened. And then we talk about it, we wonder what we're supposed to do, we post about it, but we don't do anything in our daily lives to dismantle the issue," she said.

LeRoy said she's heard from followers that it woke them up to something they'd never considered before.

This work has energized her. "Before now, I had to look inside of myself for the energy to make these things," she said. "It's really energizing to have the support of so many more people."

While her freedom piece focused on her identity as a woman, it, too, feels more relevant than ever.

LeRoy created the piece after hearing a song from Nashville artist Jess Nolan. She listened to it about 15 times the first day she heard it, and she knew she wanted to create artwork focused on the song's message.

"One of the lines says, 'The shame of just simply walking around and feeling self-conscious in a number of ways by just existing as a woman.'" LeRoy said.

LeRoy's goal with her work is to unite imagination with the everyday.

"Sometimes that is a very light-hearted thing," she said, "But other times the imagination is imagining a world where everyone is free and that things are just for everyone."

Originally from Alabama, the 31-year-old initially went to school for criminal justice.

Jordan was unintentionally going to graduate early, so she filled her last semester with electives.

She took a design class and was hooked. She went to graduate school for design and launched into the professional world.

While the connection between criminal justice and illustrations might not seem obvious, Jordan explained that her work often involves those topics.

"I've always been doing work that's rooted in Blackness and in activism," the multidisciplinary artist told Insider. "And for some reason, I never really tied that back to criminal justice, but I think there are clear indicators of that connection."

Jordan recently finished up a portrait of Breonna Taylor.

"In the beginning, I definitely did not feel inspired to create anything," she said. "But as a creative, I always feel like it's my duty to reflect the times."

In an effort to get out of her "funk," she illustrated. She started with a support Black artists post and then decided to illustrate Taylor.

"As a Black woman, we're sort of like the last ones to be thought about," she said.

While the officer who killed Floyd has been arrested, Taylor's family still has not seen justice.

Jordan wanted to shed light on the injustice, and "the best way that I see to share information is through art," she said. "I need to create something that will honor her, honor the movement, and be a way to share information."

It worked. The post quickly gained nearly 60,000 likes and reached 2.3 million people.

When Jordan looks at the portrait today, it's a mix of emotions. The picture and information have been shared with thousands, but it's still rooted in tragedy, she said.

Jordan's combating that tragedy by creating work that's more joyful.

A few days ago, Teddy Phillips got a message from a friend. It was a photograph from a recent protest in Seattle, Washington. The photo featured a familiar illustration.

A protester was marching with a portrait of George Floyd created by Phillips. Since then, he's seen two more protesters with signs of his art.

"I was shocked," Phillips told Insider. "It almost made me cry."

The Seattle-based artist has spent the past two weeks working on his "Justice Series," which is a set of portraits featuring Black men and women who have been killed.

"I started thinking about the times and how I could chronicle what was going on in the world," the 31-year-old said.

Familiar faces, like Floyd, Taylor, and Amaud Arbery, fill his feed, but Phillips has also focused on less publicized names, like Manuel Ellis, who died in the custody of four Tacoma, Washington, police officers.

"It's a painful series to actually go through," he said.

His creative process involves working with bright, bold colors he often doesn't see in his home city of Seattle.

"I want the color to be around the subject to draw you in. Once you have their attention, you can leave a message," he said.

Phillips grew up with an interest in art, but it wasn't until January that he started publishing his work.

When the coronavirus started spreading, activism became an apparent theme in his art. He started a portrait series called "She the Culture."

The series features women of color, like his mother and sister, in scrubs and face masks working on the front lines of the pandemic.

To know that people are resonating with his work "means everything," he said.

Naimah Thomas spent her childhood growing up as a Black girl in Chicago living in a home with domestic violence. The 38-year-old attributes her childhood to the art she creates and her decision to become an art therapist.

Her art reflects her experiences. One series, "I Matter," depicts three young girls and written behind them are the words "I matter" over and over again.

Thomas recently sat down to create a portrait of Breonna Taylor.

"When I see things like Breonna Taylor, that could be me," she said. "That could be a friend. That could be a young person that I work with."

Thomas said she wanted to show Taylor as being soft but strong. She chose softer colors and decided to add jewelry, nails, flowers, and a butterfly to the image.

"Having a softness that I feel like a lot of times Black women are not afforded. Typically we're shown as aggressive, problematic, angry, ghetto," Thomas said.

She said she sees Instagram art as a way to draw people into a message.

"I can be an activist through my art," she told Insider. "Maybe I'm not marching or protesting, but I can use art as a way to engage conversations, especially around mental health."

Thomas described how mental health is often a taboo topic in the Black community. But she's spent the past five years breaking down those barriers.

She tells the people she works with, "Hey, this is a space that we are co-creating together."

A similar message has become true through her artwork.

Thomas said she has plans to work with other community artists to create a coloring book of Black women who have been killed by the police.

"Not only are you using this as a way to be expressive, but you're also going to learn new information and bring attention to some of the stuff that's happening," she said.

Thomas said she plans to continue making portraits of victims killed by police and plans to focus on the women who aren't getting enough attention.

At the end of the day, she wants to let Black women and girls know that they are valued.

"You are seen, you are soft, you are kind, you are worthy, you are deserving," she said. "I hope that I can start to capture that in some of my art pieces."

Cartwright, Ariel Sinha, and Cate Young all came together to celebrate Breonna Taylor's birthday. Taylor would've turned 27 on June 5.

The trio drafted the campaign to bring justice for Taylor. The call to action urged people to create art, donate money, and fight for justice.

Cartwright, who serves as a community organizer in Atlanta, Georgia, designed the graphics to accompany the image.

"I'm just someone who's interested in being able to fill different gaps in the movement in any way that I can," Cartwright said.

Cartwright enjoys everything from singing and dancing to writing, and graphic design is the latest way her creativity has taken form.

"I believe that people — trans people, black people, small-town people — deserve to be happy, deserve justice, deserve to live full lives," she said. "It's something else to be able to depict it and to start to imagine and envision what that looks like."

Cartwright said she's already witnessed an impact from her work. The #BirthdayForBreonna campaign was shared across the world. Thousands of people donated and wrote birthday cards, calling and demanding justice from the mayor of Louisville, Kentucky.

"That felt like a win," Cartwright said. "I think that changing people's hearts and changing people's minds is just as important as something more tangible like changing a policy."

Five years ago, Cartwright lost a family member to police violence. She knows the impact that art and images can have on grieving family members.

"I know what it would have been like in that time to see people rally around him and rally to show that his life mattered," she said. "I was feeling a lot of connection to what [Taylor's] family might be feeling like."

Cartwright has no plans to pause her creativity or organizing.

"This won't be the last time you see my work out there," she said. "I want to continue on the path of uplifting Black women in this movement, who are leading the movement, and whose names are giving us the fuel to go on."

Sarah Dahir has been watching the Black Lives Matter movement from her home in Johannesburg, South Africa.

"The Black Lives Matter movement and everything that's been happening in America, it is an American issue, but it affects the whole world," Dahir told Insider.

Dahir decided to use her platform to create work that people from America and around the world could resonate with.

"Seeing that injustice, it's upsetting for everybody," she said.

Dahir said she sees her job as an artist to represent the current time and the social issues people face.

Her work had already covered topics like Black sisterhood and unity, but Dahir said she wanted to create art that had a strong link to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Her recent art features faceless women from all different backgrounds.

"I wanted to show a bit of diversity and how people can come together," she said.

She also created an image of three women leaning on each other to capture a way of support. "We can lean on each other in this moment," she said.

Dahir said not including faces in her work is intentional.

Not only did she like the aesthetics, but she also said in the last two pieces she didn't want to create an identity with the women.

"They're not anybody specific," she said. "It's everybody."

Dahir described how she felt more pressure creating these two pieces.

Her other work is more fun and easy-going, but with this work, she had a message to share.

"The power of the people is stronger than the people in power," she said. "If we come together, we can achieve almost anything."

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