The face of Iryna Zarutska stretches almost the entire height of a three-floor brick building, her blonde hair tucked over her shoulder as she peers at the corner of West Montrose and North Western avenues.
Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was fatally stabbed in North Carolina in an unprovoked attack on a light rail train in August, doesn’t have any apparent connection to North Center — or even Chicago. Most walking past don’t seem to look up.
Yet, the newly painted mural over a restaurant is part of a nationwide project by Remember Iryna, which has also overseen installations in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami and Washington, D.C., according to its website.
The killing of Zarutska, who fled the Russian-Ukrainian war for the U.S. in 2022, drew national attention and reignited right-wing critiques of “soft-on-crime” policies in Democratic-led cities. President Donald Trump called for Zarutska’s killer to receive the death penalty, and Elon Musk, who has financially backed the mural campaign, posted on X that Zarutska was killed “just for being a ‘white girl.’”
That politicization of her death has led to complicated reactions to her image on the side of the building, which neighbors say was completed a few weeks ago. The artist didn’t sign their name.
“The mural is beautiful, and obviously her story is tragic, so you take a kernel of truth, which is, ‘That shouldn’t have happened,’” said Neil Stratman, a 38-year-old actor and writer who lives close to the North Center mural. But he views the painting as a way for Musk, Trump and others on the right to vilify people of color. Zarutska’s alleged killer, DeCarlos Brown Jr., is Black.
“You blow it up in every way that you can to use her image to skew public perception,” Stratman said. “And so for people who don’t know what’s going on, it’ll work. And that’s sad.”
Brown, 35, had a criminal record and has struggled with schizophrenia. His family tried to get him help before the attack, The Charlotte Observer reported. Brown faces life in prison or the death penalty if convicted of Zarutska’s murder.
After her death, Eoghan McCabe, CEO of the AI customer service company Intercom, pledged $500,000 for a nationwide mural project for Zarutska. Musk, the owner of Tesla, SpaceX and X, pledged $1 million. Since then, McCabe has fundraised over $100,000 for the project and is soliciting more buildings for murals to be painted on.
An artist who goes by the name SAV45 painted Chicago’s mural, according to an X post by McCabe from Jan. 22, which showed the completed project. SAV45 didn’t respond to the Tribune’s interview requests.
Elizabeth Trykin, who leads the Remember Iryna memorial project, confirmed the project is funded by McCabe and Musk. She said over 900 artists have reached out to participate, and nearly 20 murals have been painted so far.
Trykin declined an interview and to comment on the project’s controversy, but the website says the project is meant to be “a public record of a preventable death.”
Leadership from Glascott and Associates — the Lincoln Park real estate company that owns the building at 2415 W. Montrose Ave., according to Cook County property records — didn’t respond to multiple interview requests.
Still, despite the politicization surrounding her death, observers remember that Zarutska was a victim.
“She came here, she found her work,” Chicago-based Ukrainian artist Kateryna Tkachenko said about Zarutska. “She loved the United States, and it’s a tragedy what happened.”
Local Ukrainian artists don’t want a political symbol
Tkachenko immigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine 10 years ago. She painted a mural dedicated to Ukraine in Ukrainian Village and saw that the Remember Iryna project was looking for artists, but she didn’t apply because of the project’s controversy.
“For me, it was this moment just to show that she was a white woman who was killed by a Black man, and I don’t want to use her name just for this reason,” Tkachenko said.
Musk has been vocal online about Zarutska, sharing images of her final moments on the train on X, the social media platform he bought in 2022. A post where he claimed Zarutska was killed for being white has over 75 million views on X. Hate speech on the platform has increased since he took it over, according to a study by researchers at California universities, allowing for other right-wing CEOs and politicians to spread sometimes racist and violent messages after Zarutska’s killing.
Ukrainian-born Chicago artist Elena Diadenko said she doesn’t think Musk’s motivation behind his involvement is to honor Zarutska. She pointed out how Musk helped Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia with access to Starlink, a SpaceX satellite internet service, but later shut the internet down as Ukraine launched a counteroffensive, throwing soldiers into a blackout.
“And now he’s trying to show that he’s painting murals of a Ukrainian woman on every building in every city … It sounds like a publicity stunt a little bit,” Diadenko said.
Diadenko and Tkachenko both said they hope the murals bring attention to safety on public transit. In November, a man allegedly threw gasoline on a woman and set her on fire on the CTA Blue Line. The incident drew nationwide outrage and further emboldened the Trump administration to threaten funding for the CTA unless new security plans were put in place.
“I would love to be open about problems with our public transport because I’m using the CTA almost daily,” Tkachenko said, adding that she would have applied to paint the mural if its message was to make transit safe.
Mural’s neighbors feel for Zarutska, but some question motives behind the art
Stratman said he found it ironic that this type of mural rests on the side of a family-owned taco restaurant, Taqueria El 5 De Mayo, because the restaurant is staffed by the same demographic of people that the politicians touting Zarutska’s name are targeting through nationwide Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdowns. The taqueria owner declined to comment.
Sebastiano Masi, 27, lives in the building where the mural is painted. He said the mural was completed in mid-January, and he’s glad to see color on the wall. The mural was painted over a faded black, white and yellow hand-painted sign advertising a real estate agency. It was around 70 years old, according to the Chicago Sign Museum, a volunteer crew documenting Chicago’s sign history and advocating for its preservation.
Last week, Masi said he came home one night to find big, blocky letters of white paint on the bottom left of the new mural spelling, “Hang Musk.” Within 12 hours, the graffiti was covered up, Masi said. The mural appears unchanged.
Masi said he followed how Zarutska’s death became “a target for far-right idealization.” Although he doesn’t like Musk or Trump, Masi said he also doesn’t like the controversy Zarutska’s death has spurred and thinks both political parties are ignoring how people of their own ideology kill others.
“Someone died, and it’s a memorial,” Masi said. “I understand why it has become such a fire, but at the same time, someone was killed. At the end of the day, you can’t deny that.”
An atypical mural process
Jeff Abbey Maldonado, a Pilsen-based muralist and art teacher, said it’s common for murals to be used as tributes. It can be painful but necessary to memorialize people, Maldonado said.
“I’m hoping that something like this at least leaves her family with some sort of solace that people care, that she’s not forgotten, that they’re not alone,” Maldonado said.
Besides serving as tributes, murals have historically been used by marginalized communities to document their experiences and make themselves visible, according to Christian Roldán, a Humboldt Park muralist who wrote a thesis on politicizing public spaces through art while studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Chicago has a long mural tradition that is credited with shaping public art. The city’s “Wall of Respect” — painted in the 1960s — famously captured Black leaders and spurred murals across the country. Mario Castillo’s “Peace” — also from the ’60s — birthed a Hispanic mural movement. Maldonado said the piece made political murals even more common.
For Roldán, the problem with the Remember Iryna project is that a billionaire is deciding whose story deserves to be told — atypical for a mural process — instead of the community, he said.
Roldán noted that Musk cut humanities funding through the Department of Government Efficiency last year, but now funds nationwide murals. But it’s not ironic, Roldán said. It’s expected. Roldán said powerful people have to be favorable in public opinion to keep power, and making artists dependent on private funds allows the wealthy to push their narratives through art and influence opinion.
“Whose humanity is acknowledged, and whose humanity is invisibilized?” Roldán said. “So, when you choose this person, this person’s face to create a propaganda, you’re also at the same time not honoring but dehumanizing this person.”
Remembering Zarutska
Ben Keller, a Connecticut artist who painted murals for the Remember Iryna project in Washington, D.C., and New York City, said he tries to stay away from the political noise because it can taint the murals’ message. Instead, Keller said he has focused on preserving the memory of Zarutska.
Even if viewers don’t agree with Musk or McCabe, “don’t hate the project that they’re funding (for) an innocent victim,” Keller said.
Diadenko said that the mural project falls short of what the country really needs and wishes Musk would fund mental health support.
“It really doesn’t matter how many murals you’re going to paint,” Diadenko said. “The issue is still there, and the issue is mental health problems in the United States.”
But she and Tkachenko still agreed that it’s a good thing people will remember Zarutska.
Tkachenko added that she’s not against the murals, and she hopes people will see them and think of the war in Ukraine. She said she just wishes Zarutska would be remembered for being Ukrainian, not a political talking point.
“Maybe because we have years and hundreds of years of being under Russian occupation, and it was a fight to be Ukrainian, have our own voice, have our own identity,” Tkachenko said. “And so it’s still very important we are Ukrainians. It’s who we are, and this person, she was Ukrainian, she’s still Ukrainian.”
