On a wall at Henry Mack / Little River Elementary School in Miami, a mural by Curaçaoan artist Francis Sling tells a quiet but powerful story about perspective.
The story behind the wall
It begins with something small. One day, the artist imagined meeting a small piece of toilet paper. In his mind, the paper was sad. It believed its whole life had only one purpose: to clean dirt. That was all it thought it was meant for.
Francis looked at it and said something simple:
Don’t believe everything you think.
He asked the paper a question. If nothing gets clean without you, how could you be less? Who decided that your role made you small?
To challenge that thought, he painted on it. Not to make it more important, and not to change what it was—but as a reminder. A reminder that value is often misunderstood, and that the way we see things can transform their meaning.
That small artwork, once painted on a fragile piece of toilet paper, has now grown into something much larger. Today it lives on the wall of a school in Miami, expanded into a mural filled with flowing color, movement, and handwritten reflections that weave through the composition.
Students who pass the wall encounter a message hidden in the story: that identity and worth are not fixed by what we think we are supposed to be. Sometimes the smallest things hold the greatest purpose.
From the Aruba Art Fair to Miami
The presence of this mural in Miami is also the continuation of a relationship that began years earlier. Francis Sling first collaborated with ArtisA in 2016, when he participated in the first Mural Festival of the Aruba Art Fair. The following year, he joined Art Fashion, another project developed during Art Week Aruba. Those early collaborations created a lasting creative connection that eventually led to this opportunity.
The mural was created during the recent visit of Their Majesties King Willem‑Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands to Miami, as part of a cultural initiative highlighting artists from the Dutch Caribbean. With the support of partners including Aruba Tourism Authority, Curaçao Tourist Board, DutchCulture USA, and the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Miami, the project brought Caribbean artistic voices into the public space of the city.
Yet at its heart, the mural remains a simple conversation. A conversation between an artist and a small piece of paper.
And through that story, Francis Sling leaves the students of Miami with a gentle reminder painted across the wall:
Do not believe everything you think.
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