“Paint the Protest” Exhibition

Off Paradise

This event has ended.

Paint the Protest, a group exhibition curated by Nancy Spector honoring artists who center cultural dissent in their practices, features works by Andrea Bowers, Raven Chacon, Sharon Hayes, Aaron Huey, Jacqueline Humphries, Francisco Masó, Richard Prince, Dread Scott, Hank Willis Thomas, and Rirkrit Tiravanija.

In her curatorial statement, Nancy Spector writes:

Dear Natacha,

I pitched this exhibition to you during a time of deep despair. The social contract I grew up believing in seemed to be shattering around us in myriad ways. Every news report brought accounts of fundamental rights being eroded by a power-hungry political party that feeds on hate, fear, and greed. How else to explain legislation that suppresses the vote or curtails reproductive freedom or makes teaching the history of this country with all its sins and blemishes a crime? How else to explain climate-change denial? Or the epidemic of school shootings? Or the disavowal of truth and the threats to democracy? I kept wondering whether art—which itself has been the target of so-called culture wars—could ever really have an impact on the consciousness of a country or at least critical constituencies that comprise it. I was haunted by the question: was it more important to be in the trenches, literally enacting dissent, than making exhibitions that describe it? I realized, however, that this is not an either/or proposition. Activism can take many forms, evocation and inspiration among them.