VOICES HER'D/Art Builds Community, Community Creates Change
ART BUILDS COMMUNITY, COMMUNITY CREATES CHANGEGroundswell Community Mural Project © Acrylic on Brick Lead Artist: Katie Yamasaki Location:M.S. 443, 330 18th Street at 6th Avenue, Sunset Park, Brooklyn. |
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PROJECT DESCRIPTION
As one of six projects in our Summer Leadership Institute (SLI), young women in our Voices Her’d program painted a large-scale mural exploring female empowerment, overcoming obstacles, immigrant rights, and gender equality: a call to end discrimination in all forms. Participants concentrated on the role that art can play in community building, especially involving organizations that work in areas of social justice. The team spent much of their planning process visiting various social justice organizations and interviewing people committed to creating change in their various fields.
The mural was designed to show how from night to day, through motion and connection, we build communities by utilizing the arts. The composition moves from right to left and includes large-scale figures of each participant. Each figure is linked to the next by different symbols that honor various movements researched and different themes that matter most to the artists.
The figures begin crouching, their clothes filled with the image of the night sky. The buildings on the back of the first figure show a dense community that suffers from pollution. Bicycle riders move away from the polluted environment to a greener world.
Figures are linked by circles and a see-saw that represent legal justice, others by a rainbow ribbon that shows solidarity to the LGBT community. As the ribbon climbs the wall, it changes to pink and then red to show support for the AIDS and breast cancer communities. A chain also weaves its way through the mural, representing the immigration process.
Finally, Voices Her’d paid homage to Andrea C. Bernal, a former participant who passed away in 2006. Andrea painted the original ‘Voices Her’d’ nameplate on the “I Dream, I Deal, I Do” mural. The team painted a similar motif in the hoop earring worn by the central figure to honor her.