The Art of Change

The Art of Change is a collaboration between Artists for Humanity and Foley Hoag. A partnership with a history and a common mission.

It started with a simple request – a call for art for a new space at Foley Hoag. Art that speaks to our current social climate, Foley Hoag’s history, and the moments and voices that have shaped ongoing struggles for a more just society. In retrospect, this was not a simple request, but rather the impetus for an amazing collaborative journey.

The Art of Change A Foley Hoag x Artists For Humanity Production 2021

THE PROJECT.

THE PARTNERSHIP.

The partnership between Foley Hoag and Artists for Humanity (AFH) began over a decade ago when AFH was a grantee of The Foley Hoag Foundation and was featured in the 2007 foundation annual report.

A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE THAT USES CREATIVITY AND DESIGN AS VEHICLES FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

1970 Kochiyama, American Activist “We Won’t Stop”

THE ART.

Civil rights activist Yuri Kochiyama worked with leaders like Malcolm X in order to build Afro-Asian relationships. She dedicated her life to contributing to social change through her participation in social justice and human rights movements.

“Our ultimate objective in learning about anything is to try to create and develop a more just society.”

1980 Chisholm, Beard and Basquiat Trailblazers

“Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth.”

Politician, educator and author Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman in Congress. Chisholm’s inclusion pairs with the decade during which Charles Beard (also featured in the painting) joined Foley Hoag.

THE FACES.

- SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

THE WORDS.

1990 Archipelagos and Butler: Afro-Futurism

Depicted in the 3rd panel is Octavia Butler, novelist/activist whose work largely revolves around haunting and what it means to live with and explore it. In continuation with this, we decided to cite Katherine McKittrick on Sylvia Wynter’s, “In addressing the ways in which space and place impact upon knowledge, subaltern political aims, and the overrepresentation of Man, her work is anchored to multiple and multiscalar“grounds”— demonic grounds, the space of Otherness, the grounds of being human, poverty archipelagos, archipelagos of human Otherness, les damnés de la terre/the wretched of the earth, the color-line, terra nullius/lands of no one.” in order to explore the the trauma and haunting birthed in these grounds in order to heal within them.

“In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.”

- OCTAVIA E. BUTLER,

2000 Fred Wilson: Wayward to freedom

“People have to deal with the fact that there is meaning in beauty, there is meaning in ugliness.

The fourth portrait will be of Fred Wilson, for the 2000s, who is an archivist/artist/ curator. A lot of his work deals with going through hidden/stored museum archives and highlighting the Afro-Indigenous history and work that otherwise would’ve stayed in their basement storage. In conjunction with the portrait will be a key(representing access to the aftermath [past, present and future] and voting slip describing Foley Hoag’s representation of the Black Political Task Force when their voting rights were violated. On the slip will also be a quote from bell hooks, Love as the Practice of Freedom on the ethic of love.

THE IMPACT.

2010 Sotomayor, Hooks, Nguyen Love, Power, Us!

THE HUMANITY.

A tribute to this century’s notable, inspirational females - ‘She-roes’: Sonia Sotomayor, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; bell hooks, author, professor, feminist, and social activist; and Amanda Nguyen, social entrepreneur and civil rights activist. This work refers to the free exploration of intersectionality, creativity, self-fullness, healing and growth.

- bell hooks

www.afhboston.org @afhboston