Make America Great Again Billboard Missiippi

Cressman Center for Visual Arts
On View:March 2 - April seven, 2018
Reception: March 2, 2018 6-8pm

This March, the University of Louisville's Cressman Center for Visual Arts is hosting work by the artist commonage For Freedoms. The grouping is the first artist-run Super PAC ("Political Action Committee"), an organisation that raises money in support for or against a political crusade, but cannot directly support a candidate.

As office of the Cressman Eye's "New Monuments" series, the exhibition will brandish For Freedoms' Make America Great Again billboard, a large-scale work that superimposes the slogan from Donald Trump'south presidential entrada over a well-known prototype from the Selma, Alabama "Encarmine Sunday" civil rights protest. This was one of many billboards that For Freedoms installed all over the United states during the final presidential election (including in nearby Lexington, KY) in club to provoke conversations about art and political activity. The work is part of a larger national campaign that investigates the relationship between art and speech, aesthetics and politics, and design and propaganda.

"New Monuments" brings i monumental work of contemporary fine art to the Cressman space and provides contextual material to situate the work both in terms of its art historical origins and its current political context. For this iteration, the Cressman Eye will be reimagined as a campaign headquarters—a space where participants organize before heading out into the field to campaign. This is, in many respects, the style that For Freedoms has operated in the final few years—every bit a base camp for instigating other artists into political conversations. The group has worked collaboratively with many artists and arts organizations. They have provided a Roy Stryker-esque prompt to photographers documenting America every bit part of the Postcards From America projection, and provided the organizational conceit for a grouping exhibition at Jack Shainman gallery in 2017. For Freedoms has also held a residency at MoMA PS1 in 2017 and is currently working on a "50 States" projection for the 2018 midterm elections.

For Freedoms was founded past Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman, and now likewise includes a core team of five — Elizabeth Baribeau, Michelle Woo, Taylor Brock, Emma Nuzzo and Evan Blaise Walsh — and a growing network of over 140 contributing artists and hundreds of institutions nationwide. It takes its proper name from Franklin D. Roosevelt'south 1941 State of the Union accost, a speech in which the president advocated against isolationism in favor of spreading American values to a European continent under threat of tyranny. In the oral communication, Roosevelt articulated the "Four Freedoms" essential to American liberty: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fright. Two years later, the voice communication inspired Norman Rockwell's iconic "Four Freedoms" paintings, which were reproduced for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.  This oscillation between art and political speech communication provoked Thomas and Gottesman to think near the role of art making in our contemporary context—one in which "speech" is non limited to citizens and political actors but has been afforded to corporations and super PACs as well.

Event Programming

March 8, 2018
Panel Discussion
Political Art and Activism: Making America Great Again
Cressman Center for Visual Arts
half dozen - 7:30pm
Produced in partnership with the Cooperative Consortium for Transdisciplinary Social Justice

March 22, 2018
Artist Talk: Eric Gottesman
Cressman Heart for Visual Arts
 six - 7:30pm
Produced in partnership with the Democracy Eye for the Humanities and Society

March 29, 2018
Freedom and Speech: A conversation near the Outset Amendment, Citizens United, and Corporate Personhood
Cressman Center for Visual Arts
 6 - 7:30pm

image:  For Freedoms / Spider Martin, Make America Great Over again  - Pearl, Mississippi, 2016, vinyl billboard, ten.5ft x 36ft. Courtesy of For Freedoms.

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Source: https://louisville.edu/art/exhibitions/all/new-monuments-for-freedoms-make-america-great-again

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