September 14 - November 29, 2020
WE LIVE! Memories of Resistance brings together In Plain Sight artists that engage the contemporary political stakes of historical remembrance and collective memory. Employing a diverse range of formally innovative creative practices, their artworks transport viewers through pasts, both real and imagined, to propose a future beyond white supremacy, settler colonialism, and the brutality of policing and punishment. Some artists manipulate materials or mine archival documents to expose the intergenerational reverberations of racism and state violence, while others invite community collaboration to reconstruct histories of resistance and to heal traumatic loss. Still others incorporate ancestral myths, histories, and knowledge to recognize the resilience of oppressed communities and to design speculative spaces of possibility, protection, and belonging.
By embracing memory as a living source of reinvention and transformation, these artists scrutinize the underlying conditions of immigrant detention to inspire acts of resistance that challenge our culture of incarceration and racial injustice.
Curated by: Kyle Stephan and Paulina Lara.
About In Plain Sight
In Plain Sight is a coalition of 80 artists united to create an artwork dedicated to the abolition of immigrant detention and the United States culture of incarceration. A highly orchestrated mediagenic spectacle and poetic action, this project is conceived in five parts -- a poetic elegy enacted on a national scale, an interactive website, an anthology docuseries, accessible actions for the public to take to join the movement against immigrant detention, and cultural partnerships producing arts-related education and engagement.
Visit the In Plain Sight website to learn more about how you can take action to end immigrant detention in the U.S.
This program is made possible by the Remsen Bird Fund and the Arts and Urban Experience Initiative, which is generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
