Engaged Editions: Creative Advocacy in Print
Nov. 17, 2018 – January 12, 2019
140 58th Street, Brooklyn, NY, USA
Engaged Editions: Creative Advocacy in Print is a group exhibition of artists’ books, creative publications, and prints used to promote collaborative advocacy, foster community engagement, and address social justice issues.
Featuring work by:
Karen Baldner – Tia Blassingame – Ernest Bryant – Tim Devin – Christeen Francis – Luis Campos-Garcia – Kiara Gilbert – Roni Gross – Lyall Harris & Patricia Silva – KakeArt (Ann Kalmbach & Tatana Kellner) – Yasmiene Mabrouk – Mary Marsh – Anna Mavromatis – Melanie Mowinski – Scott McCarney – Lize Mogel & Matthew Slaats with Monica Johnson – Iviva Olenick – Milissa Orzolek – Sara Parkel – Bundith Phunsombatlert – Maria Pisano – Mobile Print Power – Julia Rooney – Mimi Shapiro – Aaron Sinift – Meredith Stern – Patti Swanson – Voces de la Frontera – Mark Wagner – Jennifer Mack-Watkins – Jessica Williams – WORK/PLAY(Danielle & Kevin McCoy) – WW3 Illustrated – Lillian Young
The exhibition includes works by individual artists as well as collaborations between artists and social justice organizations, including protest banners created by the Milwaukee-based community organization Voces de la Frontera. Voces de la Frontera is led by low-wage workers, immigrants, and youth whose mission is to protect and expand civil rights and workers’ rights through leadership development, community organizing, and empowerment. The picket signs are a combination of bold text and compelling illustrations silk-screened onto muslin.
Queens-based, multi-generational printmaking collective Mobile Print Power(MPP) contributed “Chill Space,” a tactile and interactive installation, which includes graphic hand-sewn fabric works created through public collaboration, a small library of books representing five years of public projects, and handmade sketchbooks produced to facilitate the exchange of ideas and knowledge during public events.
Works by individual artists addressing social justice issues range from unique artists books, prints, limited edition zines, hand-embroidered fabric work, and deconstructed paper forms created from pulpified newspapers. Among these are Tia Blassingame’s Mourning/Warning: Flags (2018), a series of forty-two sewn nylon flags that correspond to people listed in Blassingame’s book works Mourning/Warning: An Abecedarian and the recent Mourning/Warning: Numbers and Repeaters. Each flag represents an African American man, woman or child that experienced violence, is missing, or died from violence or police brutality including Trayvon Martin, Marissa Alexander, Eric Garner, Oscar Grant, Phoenix Coldon, and Mario Woods.
Meredith Stern’s artistic interpretation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a series of linoleum relief prints illuminating the preamble and articles of the UDHR. The declaration was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 to address many of the injustices that took place during World War II, including issues pertaining to civil rights, economic rights, political rights, sexual rights, environmental rights, social rights, and developmental rights. Two prints from this series will be on view as well as an artist book capturing all 30 articles affirming individual rights as expressed in the text.
Engages Editions: Creative Advocacy in Print also celebrates the release of Booklyn’s newest trade publication Freedom of the Presses: Artists’ Books in the 21st Century and encourages artists, authors, and social practitioners to create and collect artists’ books as a tool for social justice.
November 17 – January 11, 2018
Opening reception: Nov. 17, 5-8pm
Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday, 12-5pm & by appointment.
Press Release available here