ON THE ROAD
Art Billboards Inspire Political Action
By: Mollly Zapp
Christopher Myers, Every Refugee Boat Is A Mayflower, 2018, 8 x 16′. For Freedoms | Billboard Project.
During the lead-up to the midterm elections, passersby in Rockland, ME, might have noticed something unusual on the lawn of the Center for Maine Contemporary Art: a billboard with “Every Refugee Boat Is a Mayflower” and an image of the open ocean. This art billboard by Christopher Myers is part of For Freedoms’ 50 State Initiative plan to install politically engaging art billboards in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.
The billboards engage broadly with a myriad of sociopolitical themes, including climate change, cultural appropriation, civil rights, sexual assault prevention and immigration, according to Emma Nuzzo, programs manager of For Freedoms. In addition to the billboards, this New York City–based art-activist nonprofit has inspired more than 200 institutions nationwide and throughout New England to participate in its project to encourage civic dialogue and engagement, without telling you how to vote. The New England institutions include MASS MoCA, RISD, Keene State College, Usdan Gallery, the city of Providence, Vermont College of Fine Arts and many others.
In 2016, photographer Eric Gottesman and sculptor and conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas, cofounders of For Freedoms, were inspired to create the 50 State Initiative while in residence at MoMA PS1 during the first 100 days of the Trump administration. There, they learned that in the 1940s, the Museum of Modern Art took its shows on the road to parts of the U.S., far away from major metropolitan museums, as “sort of a way of evangelizing about modernism and modern art.” This got Gottesman and Thomas thinking about bringing “contemporary art outside of the realm of rarified coastal institutions and bringing it to a more public place.” The billboard project became a reality after a successful crowdfunding campaign garnered $170,000. Dozens of artists working with For Freedoms designed and curated the billboards’ content. They plan to have their billboards stay up past the election in November 2018.
The billboard project is similar to the “culture jamming” found in the anti-consumerist magazine AdBusters, which attempts to subvert the conventional medium of advertising by using the form to make social commentary. For Freedoms’ tactics are markedly different from traditional art practices that dismiss or find distasteful any overlap of art and commercialization.
Anne Thompson, director and curator of Bennington College’s Suzanne Lemberg Usdan Gallery, is working with the 50 State Initiative, and founded the I-70 Sign Show public art billboard project in 2014 in Missouri. “We get so much of our information online, and so much is self-controlled by what we like, or an algorithm chooses it…A billboard is one of the last places that you can see a message that you don’t like,” says Thompson. The medium and placement of a 672-square-foot “canvas” (some dimensions vary) on the side of the road allows artists to reach a broader audience.
Importantly, none of the billboards directly advocate for or against candidates. Some of them focus on simply urging people to participate in our collective political future. One billboard in Baltimore simply states “Vote for Freedom: Today’s ballot is tomorrow’s bill.” A series of three billboards on I-95 between Boston and New York City feature red and blue text on a white background. They read, “Thank God and vote for science,” “Pray for all and vote for science,” and “Hope for the best and vote for science.” Nuzzo described For Freedoms as “anti-partisan,” and says they hope the billboards encourage artistic and civic participation and thinking about social issues in new ways. “We’re trying to make creativity essentially an American value,” says Gottesman. “Imagine if creativity were a form of patriotism.”
At the same time, it’s difficult to read their art as not aligned with the social justice movement and the political left. One billboard in Pearl, MS, by Spider Martin features a historical photo of Alabama state troopers pointing guns at civil rights activists and the text “Make America Great Again,” clearly critiquing a pro-Trump viewpoint that idealizes the past as a time of greatness.
The billboard project, which involves hundreds of artists and activists across the country, is only one part of the 50 State Initiative. The other component is a platform for a broad array of artists’ responses and community involvement. These related events and exhibitions include town hall–style meetings, interactive community sign-making projects, and politically themed gallery exhibitions. The New Britain Museum of American Art had an open call for photographs that convey “what America means to you.” The submitted photographs were collected and displayed to create Looking for America, a month-long exhibition that lasts until mid-November. Some of the projects were conceived specifically for For Freedoms, including one billboard created by Gottesman, which reads, “Not Voting Is Actually Voting.” Others had been in the works independently before the 50 State Initiative and later came to be associated with the campaign. Some museums are using the framework of For Freedoms to augment the displays alongside their permanent collections. “There’s stuff happening all over the country, and we don’t really know what it is until we see it tagged on Instagram,” Gottesman says.
Mary Beth Meehan, Imam Alli-Owe, 21 x 14½’, photographed in Providence, RI. Displayed at the RISD Museum until November 2018. Courtesy of the artist.
Mary Beth Meehan, a Providence-based photographer, turns her intimate photographs of everyday community members (including refugees, Muslims and minorities) into banners that are displayed in places one might not expect to see art, such as the sides of buildings. One that is part of the For Freedoms project is a photo of Imam Alli-Owe, a Muslim community leader whom Meehan met at a mosque in Providence. The 21-x-14½-foot banner, which will be displayed at RISD until November 2018, is a portrait of the Nigerian-born Imam. His facial expression is one of warmth and kindness.
Over the past few years, Denise Markonish, curator at MASS MoCA, thinks museums have become “less neutral” politically and that the 50 State Initiative offers a structure for artists, including those who are politically outraged or feeling at a loss, “to come together and have a community, knowing they’re supported.”
MASS MoCA has been putting up billboards near the museum since 2015. When Thomas and Gottesman approached them about the 50 State Initiative, it seemed like a perfect fit. In October, they displayed a billboard featuring a painting from Vincent Valdez’s Dream Baby Dream series, portraying images from Muhammad Ali’s ethnically and religiously diverse funeral. For Freedoms is also a partner for a sculpture by Titus Kaphar, Language of the Forgotten, currently exhibited at MASS MoCA as a preview for his Suffering from Realness exhibition, which opens in March 2019. The sculpture is seven-and-a-half-feet tall and is layered with imagery: one side is a concave profile of Thomas Jefferson, while the other is a painting of a figure whom Markonish says calls to mind Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman who bore children fathered by Jefferson.
Keene State College’s participation in the project is student-led by art majors and non-art students who are politically interested, according to Jonathan Gitelson, associate professor of art. “I want more than anything for my students to feel like they have a responsibility to democracy—
whether that’s through art, political engagement or with a nonprofit,” he says. In October, Gottesman visited the campus to speak. Students had yard sign installations that said “Freedom From” and “Freedom Of” with blank spaces for participants to fill in their personalized responses. Students also organized an October show at the campus Carroll House Gallery that featured images of billboards across the U.S., “to give people a sense of how this speaks to the larger country and not just Keene or New Hampshire,” he says.
Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA) in Montpelier hosted a similar lawn sign public art installation over the Fourth of July. However, the billboards initiative is complicated in Vermont because billboards are illegal there (lawn signs are allowed). Brittany Powell, the photographer and associate director of VCFA’s MFA in graphic design, did a little rebranding in referring to what might be called a billboard in 49 other states as “a public art installation piece, even though it’s in sign format.” Their “not-billboard,” designed by Toronto artist and VCFA faculty member Luis Jacob simply reads “Abenaki” (a tribe native to Vermont) and is framed by hands. It was unveiled on October 8, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and will stay up past the election.
At Usdan Gallery, a long-planned show by painter and sculptor Torkwase Dyson seemed like a natural fit to Thompson when she was contacted about Bennington College participating in the 50 State Initiative. Thompson described Dyson’s artistic approach as using “the language of abstraction and sculpture to talk about political ideas [and] climate change—in the broader sense, the era of the Anthropocene.” The gallery also put an open call to students to create programming that was thematically related to Dyson’s work, and selected three groups of students. One group is setting up a mobile recording station where participants can talk about their experiences with migration, immigration and family. Another group will feature a gospel performance, while the third will feature a series of watercolors about Native American identity.
The vast and decentralized nature of the 50 State Initiative mirrors the democratic process. It’s diverse, sometimes overwhelming in its breadth, and requires a wide participation to be successful. Gottesman’s goal is for For Freedoms to invent new forms of civic participation and engagement. “Art is always political, and public policy is sort of a cultural project,” he says. “We’re trying to inject art thinking and critical thinking to try to shift how we think about ourselves as citizens or participants in society, and how we engage with these institutions.”
Molly Zapp writes about culture, art and food. Her writing has appeared in Newfound, Seven Days, Cult Montreal and other publications. She lives in northern Vermont and Montreal.