Freedom in America
Art Lab Interns + Hannah Leathers
Platte Forum Lead Artist Residency
March-May, 2018
I was lucky enough to be a lead artist resident with Platte Forum’s Art Lab teen program in the spring of 2018. I started the residency by teaching an eight-week class about the foundations of drawing, and how they relate to foundations of social justice and privilege. Each drawing lesson began with a lesson about an anti-oppression topic, which was then connected to a foundational drawing skill. We explored topics like unconscious biases and how they relate to stream of consciousness drawing, portrait drawing and “seeing” each other and intersectionality, and life drawing and as a tool to observe our own voyeurism and objectification, to name a few.
Throughout the eight-week class, I worked with the ArtLab students to develop a one-night exhibition titled “Freedom in America.” The concept for the show was collaborative and developed over the course of the residency. The exhibit questioned what it means to be “free” in America. ArtLab students explored unapologetic expression of personal identities, and spotlighted oppressive forces in our society through drawing and performance.
The exhibition was made up of 150+ double-sided picket signs. The front of each sign was strictly visual — no text — and portrayed drawn expressions of the students identities as they relate to “freedom.” On the backside of each picket sign was a personal poem. Students were encouraged to explore personal identity, oppression, and being unapologetic in their beings. During the exhibition, every 30 minutes students flipped the picket signs around to the backsides, exposing their poems. At the end of the line of picket signs was a collaborative poem that read “we are the hope of tomorrow that will build the inclusivity and diversity that you could not.”
Show statement (written by students, facilitated by me):
“This show represents what the American generations before us have created. You have been shouting in our faces “this is freedom!” since we took our first breaths. But what you failed to recognize is that your definition of freedom varies vastly from ours. With this show, we have built a march-less march; our voices coming together as one to construct a unity of power, dismantling oppression and welcoming freedom, abolishing conformity through an act of integration. We are. And We will persist.”