Artists for Social Justice 2020
USA - Last year, artist Virginia Mallon began organizing a nationwide tour of shows for a collaboration of artists entitled ‘Artists for Social Justice 2020’. This collaborative and expansive show was set to launch this past March at Queen’s College of the City University of New York. Unfortunately this has now been postponed due to social distancing, but let me tell you, we are so excited to launch this collection because we are OBSESSED. Beautiful art mixed with timely issues of social justice? What more do you need?!
From the submission by artist and creator Virginia Mallon:
These timely exhibitions support those who are striving for freedom and resisting oppression. The art features Donna Bassin’s powerful portraits of resistance from the daily onslaught of obliteration and silences; Marissa Bridge’s mixed media tributes to the children incarcerated at our borders; Barbara Friedman’s delicate landscapes touch upon the fragility and precarious future of our natural world. Holly Gordon’s photography captures climate crisis in China. Virginia Mallon’s work addresses refugee and immigrant issues, while fiber artist Dee Mallon focuses on the abandonment of thousands in the aftermath of natural disasters. Australian artist Jessica Waddington’s images spotlight the threat of rising waters and catastrophic fires faced in her homeland. Lydia Makepeace’s celebrates the long-ignored contributions of women of color, and Beatrice Lebreton’s work comment on women’s contributions to contemporary society. Jessica Nissen explores the human role as conservator and destroyer of the natural world. Maggie Rose’s collage touches upon racial diversity and social justice, and while the sculptures of community activist Yvonne Shortt center on equality, race and disability. Photographer and author Susan Saunders uses language and images for her work on immigration. Jonathan Talbot’s work is a commentary on the border wall with Mexico.
We are so thrilled we get to share and launch the work of over 10 artists from across the United States. Please enjoy surfing through this collection, and take a look at the small descriptions above each piece to give more context to each artist’s work!
For more information, visit the Artists for Social Justice 2020 website!
Donna Bassin
For more information, please visit Donna’s Official Website!
“Since the election of Donald Trump, I have been inviting people into my studio to respond to the current sociopolitical state of the country through the co-creation of photographic portraits. Each portrait (with accompanying text) is a personal testimony and opportunity to resist the daily onslaught of obliteration and silencing.”
My Own Witness: Shontel
Donna Bassin
My Own Witness: Messiah
Donna Bassin
Marissa Bridge
For more information about Marissa, please visit her official design website and her official fine art website!
“In 2018, I was thinking about what to do for my first large 3-D flower piece. I was scaling up from a 6” x 6” panel to a 24” x 24” one. My Buddhist practice compelled me to create something that would make positive change in the world. The news coming from the US border with Mexico was devastating, and I decided to do something for the children in the detention centers in Texas, the children that have been separated from their parents, placed in cages, and who have suffered terribly. I want them to know that someone is thinking about them, someone is sending them love and hope in the form of a white flower. Do I think those children will ever see this piece? I hope so, but it’s ok if they can’t. The intention is there. If the public sees it when it is displayed, they will know that I made this because I care about those children and their mistreatment by the US government. My share of the proceeds from the sale of this artwork will be donated to the Women’s Refugee Commission.”
FLOWER FOR DETAINED CHILDREN
Marissa Bridge
Barbara A. Friedman
For more information about Barbara, please visit her official website! and follow her on Instagram! (And hover over each image in the slideshow below to see the title of each piece!)
“My work is an intuitive response to the landscape and the environment. By placing myself within the natural world away from technology with limited tools there is the opportunity to hear not only myself but the heartbeat of nature itself. The work then becomes a collaboration with nature where creative methods and natural boundaries are intertwined. My fear is that future generations will not have the opportunity to access this space and place.”
Holly Gordon
Please visit Holly Gordon’s official photography website!
“Daylight on the Yangtze River at first appear to be early morning mist...but it never lifts. Like fire-spewing dragons, cement factories spew pollution and cloud the homes and land of people who have lived in harmony with their environment for ages.
Some people wear masks to filter the pollutants that irritate eyes and throat... but in the end masks cannot prevent contamination. China’s water supply, crops and fish have already reached frighteningly high levels of contamination...which should give us all something to cry over and do something about. Pollution contributes to premature deaths and contamination knows no borders and crosses oceans with remarkable potency.
The Forbidden City takes on a new connotation as pollution adds to its forbidden- ness...but pollution is not limited to Beijing. Pollution knows no boundaries. It is spreading throughout the world, across oceans, even down into the pristine air of Antarctica. Once upon a time Beijing was known as a city of open skies. Today the air is thick and grey from coal, its most abundant energy source.”
PERNICIOUS POLLUTION
Holly Gordon
Beatrice Lebreton
Please visit Beatrice’s official website and follow her on Instagram!
“As human beings and more so as women, we are born into stereotypes and expectations. Therefore, in order to find ourselves and connect with our own identities, we have to break all that down. This woman is defiant and demand respect. She uncovered and captured her essence as female which came from self-acceptance.”
EGO SUM
Beatrice Lebreton
Lydia Makepeace
For more information, please visit Lydia’s official website!
Lydia’s current Affirm Black Women portrait series examines how white supremacy, misogyny, and ableism intersect to oppress and erase the legacy of Black women. In the United States Black women are more likely to die in childbirth, be victims of intimate partner violence, and live in poverty than their white counterparts. By highlighting the work and words of Black women Lydia strives to center the voices of the most marginalized people fighting for social justice.
Ten percent of proceeds from the Affirm Black Women series are donated to Women With a Vision, a New Orleans social justice non-profit created by and for women of color. For the past 30 years Women With a Vision has been providing health services and advocating for New Orleans’ most marginalized women.
LEAH CHASE
Lydia Makepeace
WARSAN SHIRE
Lydia Makepeace
JESMYN WARD
Lydia Makepeace
Virginia Mallon
Please visit Virginia’s official website!
“Asylum and Nevermore address the inhumane treatment of refugees and immigrants in the United States of America.
Asylum reflects on the policy to separate and incarcerated families seeking Asylum.
Nevermore contemplates the fractured symbol of the American Dream and the meaning of “The New Colossus” engraved at the feet of Lady Liberty. Instead of the Lazarus poem, it lists the names of those who have perished trying to reach asylum in the US. Compiled from multiple sources, it is not a comprehensive list, but a symbol of the thousands who have died seeking freedom.”
ASYLUM
Virginia Mallon
NEVERMORE
Virginia Mallon
Jessica Nissen
Please visit Jessica’s official website! (And hover over each image in the slideshow below to see the title of each piece!)
“Bubbles are emptiness - a tiny cloud shielding a mathematical singularity,” Andrea Prosperetti writes, “Born from chance, a violent and brief life ending in the union with the nearly infinite.”
“I am extrapolating this theory in my recent "Froth" series to apply to both a physical structural reality and a metaphysical phenomenon...as both a life-giving force of nature - a primordial foam - and a destructive event caused by climate change or natural disaster. "Froth" is also a metaphor for the fluidity and churn of our collective psychology and emotional ties to each other...a perpetually changing landscape.
The language of nature is universal. We recognize ourselves in the organic; we search for ourselves in the synthetic. It is our responsibility to resist a fugue state and endeavor to maintain the health of our environment and our equilibrium with it. Our current ecological bureaucratic atmosphere supports an overriding indifference to the correlation between us and our world...a shortsighted mindset that will have irreparable consequences. It is an especially relevant discussion as the anthropocene, described as a time period during which humans influence the biosphere and its multiple systems, enters the common lexicon and we face an existential threat exacerbated by political motivations, greed, and torpor. We must be part of nature’s reclamation. Creative expression has the capacity to raise consciousness and reflect the shifting ethos. As artists we navigate our way through the expansive complexity of the world and filter our brief experience here through its beauty, fragility, volatility, disruption and constant flux.”
Maggie Rose
Please visit Maggie’s official website!
“Justice allows us to be judged. As a society of Americans, we have enjoyed more than 240 years of the American Experiment, begun in 1776 with The Declaration of Independence. Chaos and inequality of all types threaten the continued progress of The American Experiment in 2020.
With this work, “Just Society” I begin a new artistic direction that attempts to visualize the experience of the threats to democracy. I want to contribute to the documentation of our times by visually expressing the emotions, representing our culture of information indulgence in an atmosphere of growing propaganda and social disintegration.
I subscribe to the effort of recognizing our social disintegration in order to begin repairing the damage. I believe we must not use force or intimidation but encounter each other face to face in conversation, seeking common ground together. My hope is to spark conversation about how to build unity back into our social fabric, inclusively, with equal justice for all.”
JUST SOCIETY
Maggie Rose
Susan Saunders
Please visit Susan Saunders’ official photography website! (And hover over each image in the slideshow below to see the title of each piece!)
“I grew up in south Texas, just a short drive from the Mexican border, a natural border delineated by the Rio Grande. My own area had been part of Mexico at least as long as it has been part of the United States. Ninety percent of the people in my town are of Mexican descent. The border was fluid back then—many of us shopped in Mexico on a regular basis, went to restaurants there, went to doctors there, visited relatives who still lived there. Migrant workers came from Mexico to help out on farms and ranches in Texas, arriving after they'd planted their own crops. Yes, some of them were entering the country illegally, but they were a regular and reliable part of the workforce. They usually returned home in time to harvest their own crops. If they happened to be apprehended by what was then the Border Patrol, they were bussed to the border and released, not punitively detained for months.
The wall isn't about keeping crime out. Trump is building his abominable wall solely to exclude people of color. Guess what? They've been here a lot longer than he has, and they’ve been through worse. They will prevail, and so shall we all.”
Jonathan Talbot
Please visit Jonathan’s official website!
“Inspired by 19th & 20th century bricks which were often marked with the names or initials of their makers, the intention of “Border Wall Bricks” is to reveal some of the impulses, emotions, and actions which make up the wall that is being built along the southern border of the United States.”
“BORDER WALL BRICKS”, 2020
Jonathan Talbot
Jessica Lindsay Waddington
Please visit Jessica’s official website!
“The denial of climate change is not just ignorant, but malign and evil as it denies the human rights of the most vulnerable people in the world. There is a scientific consensus that global warming is happening and is caused by human activity. What will it take for people to take this seriously before it's too late?”
WHEN WILL YOU PAY ATTENTION?
Jessica Lindsey Waddington