In an abandoned housing project in New Orleans, graffiti artist Brandan “Bmike” Odums evokes the legacy of iconic figures alongside urban residents struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

“I like the juxtaposition of painting someone like Muhammad Ali and then painting someone right across the room—a regular person from New Orleans,” Odums says in a new video from The Atlantic, in which he gives a tour of his workspace. “By painting both [people] on the same scale and in the same way, you show that there’s value in the lionized characters, but there’s also value in the everyday person that’s trying to survive.”

The film was directed by Lucy Wells.