Filmmaker Lilly Wachowski (The Matrix, Sense8) has painted portraits of the 27 trans people known to be murder victims in the U.S. in 2016, for an art exhibit at Chicago's Center on Halstead. All of the brightly-colored portraits in "Say Our Names" incorporate the colors of the trans flag and are based on photos of the victims.

She began painting them last July, she says, as "an outlet of the overwhelming emotion I was feeling in the relentless waves of mortal acts of violence against trans people."

"With each headline, each murder, I felt the need to connect, to remember, to honor," she adds. “We must recognize these murders for what they are—a genocidal project. Trans people are under attack and trans women of color, specifically, are being singularly and systematically wiped out.”

The first portrait was based on Mercedes Successful, who was killed last May in Florida. "It was an amazing photograph," Wachowski told Windy City Times. "She looked beautiful. So I ended up painting this portrait of Mercedes and I kept doing it, one after another."

While she was working on the paintings, Wachowski read as much as she could find about each of the women, to connect with who they were when they were still alive.

"Researching the people was incredibly hard," she admits. "It was super emotional: I would read about the person and choose a photo of them that captured something about them that felt like their true selves. In doing so, you find the friends and relatives who loved them. Even after they were gone, people were still posting on their Facebook pages saying how much they missed them. It was really hard to process."

The painting above is of Keyonna Blakeny, a makeup artist at MAC cosmetics in Maryland. But in some instances, there was little to no information available about the subjects.

"That was heart wrenching," Wachowski said. "Being a transgender human being, there is a part of you that is in isolation. You have a fear of connectivity and I have a sense that it's why there is nothing about some of these lives. They were unable to connect because of their transness. So I was crying whether I found a wealth of material or crying if I wasn't."

"Say Our Names" will be on display at Center on Halstead from June 2-11.