Liberation by Hervey Garcia
Mexican visual artist Hervey Garcia created Liberation, a 600-foot kinetic mural made from over 500 handcrafted stencils. At first glance, it looks like a colorful wall. But the magic happens when you’re moving. As cars drive past at 35-45 mph, the still images blur together into animation. A galloping horse stretches, shifts, morphs into a winged Pegasus, and finally lifts off into a bird soaring through a starry night sky. It is not a screen. There is no electricity. Just paint, sequence, and motion, and the result is breathtaking.
“I put my soul into this mural, and people have embraced it. That’s what really matters to me.” -Garcia
See
This idea of turning still images into moving ones isn’t new. It goes back over 140 years to a man with a bet, a horse, and a camera. In 1878, English photographer Eadweard Muybridge set up a row of cameras along a racetrack to answer a question people had argued about for years: Does a horse ever have all four feet off the ground at once? The answer was yes. His sequential photographs, “The Horse in Motion,” didn’t just settle a debate. They cracked open something entirely new.
He placed his images onto a spinning drum called a Zoetrope, and suddenly, those still frames became a galloping horse again. Motion from stillness. Life from a sequence of images. It was one of the first moving pictures ever made.
Eadweard Muybridge, The Horse in Motion
Muybridge called his projection device the Zoopraxiscope, and with it, he projected his photographs onto a screen for audiences in San Francisco. People were stunned. Cinema as we know it grew directly from that moment. Liberation honors that legacy. Garcia drew directly from Muybridge’s horse photographs, the same horse, the same gallop, and stretched it across 600 feet of concrete so your movement becomes the projector. You are the Zoetrope spinning. You complete the artwork.
Muybridge used a series of photographs to create the first moving image. Garcia creates hundreds of unique stencils and paints them in sequence, and as you pass, the movement appears.
Given the mural’s allure, people wondered whether it would be too distracting or even unsafe, but the artist quickly addressed their concerns. “I designed a safe animation that requires you to drive at least 35 mph (the speed limit allowed for safety is 45 mph),” he wrote. “Not to mention that this animation cannot be perceived directly by the human eye from a car; you need a co-pilot to record it on a cell phone. That makes it even safer. Thank you for being mindful of everyone’s safety! We are good humans.”
Hervey Garcia and Kacey Musgraves, Middle of Nowhere
The “Middle of Nowhere” kinetic mural came about through a dynamic, collaborative effort between seven-time Grammy-winning singer Kacey Musgraves, muralist Hervey Garcia, and local city entities. The mural debuted in April 2026 in Indio, California, which is home to two of the biggest music festivals on the planet: Coachella and Stagecoach.
The timing was spot on, as every spring, hundreds of thousands of people pour through that valley. Musgraves sang her song “Middle of Nowhere” in a surprise appearance at Coachella. The mural is more than just a wall. It is a living, moving extension of her music. And the city of Indio was all in, backing the project as a bold statement about what public art can be during the city’s most-watched season.
Say
- Hervey Garcia transformed a freeway overpass into a moving work of art, but it only comes alive when you are moving. What does it feel like to know that you complete the artwork?
- Eadweard Muybridge spent years chasing the truth of a single moment: a horse mid-gallop, all four feet off the ground. Is there a moment in your own life that felt impossible to capture, but you just knew was real?
- From Muybridge’s spinning drum to Garcia’s 600-foot wall, artists have always found ways to make stillness move. If you could freeze one thing in motion (an animal, a person, a feeling) and turn it into art, what would it be?
Do
- If you find yourself near the Coachella Valley, swing by the Fred Waring Drive bridge in Indio and drive past at 35-45 mph. Let a wall take your breath away.
- Make a flip book! You don’t need a wall or a bridge. All you need is a stack of sticky notes or a small notepad.
- On the last page, draw a simple shape. It could be a bird, a flower, a stick figure…
- On each previous page, move that shape just a little bit.
- Flip through the pages quickly with your thumb.
- Make your own Zoetrope…It’s kind of a flipbook on a wheel!
About the Artist: Hervey Garcia
