Yard Sign Activation by For Freedoms
DETAILS
October 17 – November 11, 2016
EVENTS
Activation Site: Freedom Park Farmers Market
Activation Site: Grant Park Farmers Market
Activation Site: Elevate Microcosm Block Party
Hank Willis Thomas Lecture
What Freedoms Are You For?
Flux Projects, in collaboration with For Freedoms, invites Atlanta’s participation in making an outdoor public sculpture. The community is invited to the “Yard Sign Activation” sites to complete a bandit sign. Tell us what issues are important to you and share why you vote. The completed signs will be installed as a large-scale sculptural installation at the four corners of Freedom Parkway and Highland Avenue from October 17 to November 11, 2016.
Additionally, Flux Projects will host a free public lecture by artist Hank Willis Thomas at The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library at 7:00 PM on Wednesday, October 19, 2016. Hank Willis Thomas will speak about the creation of and inspiration behind For Freedoms as a collaborative and civically-minded artistic project, which involves over 50 artists, and the many activations it has executed across the country in advance of the presidential election
About For Freedoms
For Freedoms is an artist-run super PAC founded to encourage art-based forms of political discourse and deeper engagement surrounding the upcoming presidential election. It draws inspiration from FDR’s articulation of the freedoms that underscore civil society: freedom of speech, freedom to worship, freedom from fear, and freedom from want. The medium for this project is American democracy, and it includes nation-wide exhibitions, large-scale public activations and opportunities for audience participation in voicing and presenting their own commitments to personal freedoms.
About Hank Willis Thomas
Hank Willis Thomas is a conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to identity, history and popular culture. His work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and abroad including, the International Center of Photography, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Musée du quai Branly, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Thomas’ work is in numerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the High Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, among others. His collaborative projects include Question Bridge: Black Males, In Search Of The Truth (The Truth Booth), and For Freedoms. He received a BFA in Photography and Africana studies from New York University and a MFA/MA in Photography and Visual Criticism from the California College of Arts. He has also received honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute of Art and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. Thomas lives and works in New York City.
About Eric Gottesman
Eric Gottesman photographs, writes, makes videos, teaches and uses art as a vehicle to explore aesthetic, social and political culture. His photographs have been shown at many galleries and institutions, including the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts; MoMA PS1, Queens; Jack Shainman Gallery, New York; Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College; the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts; and Addis Adaba City Hall, Ethiopia. In 2014, he published his celebrated first monograph, Sudden Flowers (Fishbar, London), and co-founded For Freedoms, an artist-run Super PAC, with artist Hank Willis Thomas. Gottesman is the recipient of a 2017 International Center of Photography Infinity Award, a 2015 Creative Capital Artist Grant, and a 2010 Fulbright Fellowship in art as well as an Artadia Award, an Aaron Siskind Foundation Artist Fellowship, a Massachusetts Individual Artist Fellowship and other grants and awards. In 2017, he was an artist-in-residence at MoMA/PS1 and at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, Ohio. His work is in various collections, including in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He is an Assistant Professor of Art at the State University of New York (Purchase College) and a Mentor in the Arab Documentary Photography Project in Beirut, Lebanon.
