September 8, 2018 | Today my work 'Imagine Something Other Than A Cage' went up at the Brooklyn Museum as part of the Printmaking: Resistance exhibit.
The Brooklyn Museum is exemplary in its community outreach and public offerings around its special exhibitions and permanent collection. I've been a part of the Gallery/Studio Program since 2017, most recently participating in Printmaking: Resistance, in which artists from various backgrounds, led by Laurel Shute, created prints in correspondence with the museum's exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985.
Printmaking has long been a technique used by activists, organizers and artists to democratize the dissemination of ideas beyond the exclusive realms of wealth and even literacy. I find it utterly exciting!
The phrase "imagine something other than a cage" came up in a conversation between Angela Y. Davis, Patrisse Cullors and Melissa Harris-Perry and stuck in my mind. What would happen if we challenged ourselves to picture something else? A classroom, not a cage. A home, not a cage. A community, not a cage. A free exchange of people and ideas, rather than a wall.
'Imagine Something Other Than A Cage' combines two different forms of printmaking: the three central images are pronto prints based on photograph and text collages; they are mounted on a larger piece of paper with the words "We Want Freedom" repeated as block prints across it, in a pattern reminiscent of, but softer than, bars.