AAPI Artist's mural bringing life, history to the Shiloh community in Wake Co.: 'Makes me happy'

MOORISVILLE, N.C. (WTVD) -- May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AAPI0 Heritage Month. ABC11 is using the month to highlight and share unique stories about the people in the community including an AAPI artist who is using his skill and brushes to make a mark in North Carolina.

Raman Bhardwaj is living his dream of becoming an artist in America.

"I'm Indian from South Asia. I've been here now almost six years in the U.S.," Bhardwaj explained. "I use a lot of saturated colors and I think they have a different impact on the mind, on the soul, on the emotions.

So, that is what I bring from my culture."

In the time Bhardwaj has been in the county, his work has grown in popularity across North Carolina. "I've painted about more than 50 murals in different parts of North Carolina,: Bhardwaj said.

"Many of them are in Greensboro. And, now some of them here in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and now Morrisville."

Bhardwaj's latest work is a mural on the bathroom building in Morrisville at Shiloh Park honoring the Shiloh Community with deep roots in the area. "I'm representing their history," Bhardwaj explained.

In Wake County, Shiloh was a rural community of free African Americans and enslaved people in the late 1820s. By 1870, Shiloh was a self-sufficient community that grew into a thriving area home to nearly 60 farmers on property from the Durham County line to the south of McCrimmon Parkway in Wake County. The land was annexed into the town of Morrisville in 1987.

"That makes me really happy that, you know, I can represent the people who I don't even know and in a way, I will know them and they will know me. Even when I'm gone from here this artwork just stays on," he added.

Bhardwaj hopes his work will inspire others to learn the meaning behind the murals and better understand what it represents.