Whose Kid, Our Kid
Oil on canvas                                                                                                                         

Vengeance Is Mine (Romans 12:19) Oil on canvas


At first glance, you might dismiss the boy in this portrait as a petulant teen. But take the time to look more closely, learn his story, and you’ll soon discover the wounded child behind those defiant eyes.

Laurence Pierce’s “Whose Kid, Our Kid” memorializes Robert “Yummy” Sandifer, a fictional Chicago youth murdered by his own street gang. The son of a drug-addicted mother and an incarcerated father, Yummy finds in the Black Disciples a surrogate family that welcomes him into a world of unthinkable violence. 

In “Stay the Hand,” Yummy’s photograph sits atop a pile of skulls and teddy bears, part of a makeshift memorial like the ones found on street corners in predominantly Black neighborhoods across this country. Where another young man stands at the same crossroad, a mother figure intervenes, urging restraint and reconsideration. 

Whether motivated by loyalty, revenge, or vigilantism, Pierce’s work rejects violence as a means of conflict resolution, equating intra-gang homicide with the racially motivated violence of the Klu Klux Klan. He calls upon the larger community to care for and lift up its most vulnerable members. 

“We are called upon as a community to offer radical love. As artists, teachers, parents, we have an obligation to turn weapons of violence into tools for achieving excellence. We must reconnect with our children, with our neighbors’ children, and give them the gift of our care and our time.”

—Laurence Pierce