“The Bloody Sunday Commemorative Mural” is a simple memorial that was painted in October 1997 to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Bloody Sunday Massacre. The mural depicts only the faces of the fourteen men who were killed. By confronting the audience only with the faces, the mural allows viewers to form their own opinion. Rather than feeding the audience a narrative, as is the case with “Bloody Sunday” where Duddy is portrayed as a martyr, the audience is given the opportunity to form their own narrative. As Tom states, “we wanted to keep it simple. Here are the people who died. This is what they looked like” (The People’s Gallery)
The faces are set against a red background, but the artists claim to have deliberately used a muted red. They wanted the background to be mellow, sad, rather than inflammatory. The faces are arranged inside a circle, “the youngest being given special prominence while the older faces surround them suggesting parental concern” (The People’s Gallery). The faces are also surrounded by fourteen oak leafs, a leaf for each victim. Derry takes its name from the Irish word, Doire, meaning oak grove. The oak leaf is a symbol of Derry, but is neither Protestant or Catholic.