In an interview with the Globe, Opa owner Francois Karam said he reached out to Gaudreau and offered Opa’s building for a new mural. Karam said he saw a piece of Zarutska in himself and his family, who immigrated to the United States from the Middle East after 9/11.
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“We got bullied and harassed as well,” said Karam. “We took it on the chin, especially being Arabs and Lebanese and owning an Arabic establishment, and kept going.”
Karam said his family struggled, and he regularly took trains and buses, like Zarutska, to get around. “I saw a lot of myself, honestly, in Iryna,” he said. Her story “really spoke to us.”
Gaudreau had originally been painting a mural of Zarutska on the side of The Dark Lady, a well-known LGBTQIA+ club in downtown Providence popular for its drag shows. The nightclub’s owners have not returned requests for comment, but canceled the project after scores of critics, including Providence Mayor Brett Smiley, spoke out against the origins and funding of the project.
The former mural of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukranian refugee who was killed on public transit in North Carolina in August 2025, on the side of The Dark Lady. This project has been canceled.Christopher Gavin/Globe Staff
The art became the center of a controversy in Providence, especially as the mural was one of several being created in cities around the country as part of an initiative started by Eoghan McCabe, CEO of the customer service platform Intercom, in the weeks after Zarutska’s death.
Zarutska was fatally stabbed as she rode a commuter train in Charlotte, N.C., on Aug. 22, 2025. The killing was quickly politicized by President Trump and the MAGA movement, blaming Democrats for crime in blue cities, especially as the suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., had a lengthy arrest record.
McCabe, in a post on X in September, said he would offer 50 $10,000 grants to artists to paint murals of Zarutska’s face “in prominent US city locations,” drawing a slew of “White Lives Matter” replies. Billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk responded to the announcement, saying he would contribute $1 million. Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer and far-right influencer, also responded, saying he’d match Musk’s contribution.
Gaudreau previously told the Globe that his mural at The Dark Lady was part of a project started by McCabe, and funding had also come through McCabe’s fund-raiser on GiveSendGo.com, a Christian crowdfunding website that gained attention for hosting a fund-raiser in support of a white woman who used a racial slur against a Black child.
Gaudreau said he is still looking for a large-scale building to create another mural — which he said should be 60 feet tall by 40 feet wide and be in either Providence or Boston. That new mural and the smaller one at Opa would be part of the rememberiryna.org collection, he said.
Since the mural at The Dark Lady went public, Gaudreau said he has been nervous for his safety, and has received death threats. Gaudreau is a well-known muralist in southeastern New England, and has painted murals inside restaurants and nightclubs, including Providence’s Medici, The George on Washington, Saint (now closed), among others. In the early 2010s, he designed and painted a more than 460-foot long mural for the town of Mansfield, Mass., for which he was honored by the state House of Representatives.
“I like to make small works that are sentimental for specific people,” said Gaudreau. “And that’s why, that’s why I wanted to get involved in this project because it felt small and sentimental to me. Now it’s this global controversy.”
The Avenue Concept, a nonprofit responsible for many large murals around Providence, is hosting a public forum at AS220, another local arts nonprofit, on Tuesday night to talk about the role of public art “in response to the recent controversy surrounding the latest mural in downtown Providence.”
Gaudreau said he will attend, and feels “obligated to be there and speak.”
“You’re getting together a room full of people that are angry about this mural,” he said. When he was first approached by a project manager to help paint murals of Zarutska, he said he interrogated them to “make sure there was some real feeling and emotion behind” the project.
Despite the threats, other area artists are rallying around Gaudreau.
Arthur Cayo, a local painter, began helping Gaudreau with the mural at Opa over the weekend. In 2020, after peaceful Black Lives Matter rallies took place in Providence, a mob of people broke into the Providence Place Mall and looted stores in downtown. At the time, Cayo painted hearts over boarded up storefronts as “a universal message of peace.”
On Monday, Cayo said he assisted Gaudreau because he felt like Zarutska was “killed senselessly,” which “left me feeling the same way I felt when Breonna Taylor was killed and I painted her also during the pandemic.”
“All the political stuff and division I’m not into it,” said Cayo. “[I] just want to paint.”
Opa Restaurant in Providence’s Federal Hill neighborhood is allowing artist Ian Gaudreau to paint a mural of Iryna Zarutska on an exterior wall.Steph Machado/Globe Staff
Federal Hill is historically known for being the Italian neighborhood of Providence. Rick Simone, the president of the Federal Hill Commerce Association, said he wanted everyone to “respect the process,” no matter what their stance is politically.
“This is not something [the Commerce Association] gets involved in or take a personal stake on,” said Simone in an interview on Monday. “It’s private property, a private artist, and all we want, to be honest, at this point is for people to respect that.”
Since the mural on Opa’s building became public, Karam said the restaurant has received a handful of negative one-star reviews online, and he has personally been called a “fascist” on social media.
Unity “is the whole point of the mural,” said Karam. “It’s about supporting one another in our country and loving one another, and you know, the vision and then the hate and the negativity that we see is just nonsense. It’s unnecessary.”
This mural “should bring people together,” he said.
Alexa Gagosz can be reached at alexa.gagosz@globe.com. Follow her @alexagagosz and on Instagram @AlexaGagosz.