WATER MILL, NY.- The Parrish Art Museum announces the opening of Another Justice: US is Them—Hank Willis Thomas | For Freedoms, featuring work by 12 contemporary artists from For Freedoms—the artist coalition founded by conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas, Eric Gottesman, Michelle Woo, and Wyatt Gallery—with the mission to model and increase creative civic engagement, discourse, and direct action. On view July 23 through November 6, 2022 in the Parrish galleries, outdoors on the Museum grounds, and as digital billboards on the Shinnecock Monuments on Sunrise Highway, Another Justice: US is Them includes nearly 30 works and series—many created specifically for the exhibition—in mixed media, sculpture, site-specific installation, wall painting, and photography.
Another Justice: US is Them is a call to the community to reconvene and reconsider what justice can be in a time of imbalance. The participating artists—Zoë Buckman, Pamela Council, Jeremy Dennis, Jeffrey Gibson, Eric Gottesman, Christine Sun Kim, Muna Malik, Joiri Minaya, Koyoltzintli Miranda-Rivadeneria, Kambui Olujimi, Hank Willis Thomas, and Marie Watt—have collaborated with For Freedoms to encourage audience participation through art, collaboration, and cultural strategy. PA robust schedule of public programs during the run of the exhibition will delve into overarching themes and specific works.
Planned in conjunction with For Freedoms’ ongoing series of initiatives entitled Another Justice: By Any Medium Necessary, the exhibition at the Parrish presents work that considers the concept of justice and what it means to each artist personally and collectively through a variety of media, perspectives, and interpretations. While Buckman’s embroideries explore joy as an antidote to violence against women, Minaya’s collaged photographs of camouflaged figures address colonial idealization of both female bodies and landscape. Olujimi’s drawings of U.S. presidential assassins ask the question: Who is empowered to render justice and on whose behalf? Thomas’s large-scale textile works, made of deconstructed U.S. flags and prison uniforms, investigate the fabric of our nation, while Gottesman obscures or reimagines images of violence and appropriated indigeneity by white makers.
Council’s sculptures, built from factory conveyor belts and painted in brilliant color, relate to her family’s history working in the nearby potato fields. Kim created an immersive wall painting with repeating notations in American Sign Language. Malik’s boat evokes a collective travel toward a more just world, and Thomas’s neon sign, Remember Me, 2022, honors those who actively participate in society but are often unrecognized.
Works by Indigenous artists Dennis (Shinnecock), Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw-Cherokee), Miranda-Rivadeneira (Ecuadorian, Chi'xi), and Watt (Seneca) will be shown on the nearby Shinnecock Monuments—62-foot-tall electronic billboards erected by the Shinnecock Indian Nation in 2019 along the highway to generate revenue for the Nation. The digital billboards, which will be live on the Monuments from July 4 through October 7, engage with the Land Back Movement and invite viewers to consider their own relationship to the land.
In an ongoing partnership with the Museum, The Watermill Center has invited For Freedoms for a residency from September 14 to October 7, 2022 as part of its Inga Maren Otto Fellowship for visual artists. During the residency and in collaboration with The Watermill Center and the Parrish, For Freedoms will organize a series of public programs and Town Halls with members of the East End community. Previous Inga Maren Otto Fellows who exhibited at the Museum include Tomashi Jackson (2021), Lucien Smith (2019), and Barthélémy Toguo (2018).
Another Justice: US is Them—Hank Willis Thomas | For Freedoms is organized by Corinne Erni, Senior Curator of ArtsReach and Special Projects, with support from Brianna Hernández, Curatorial Fellow, and is co-curated by Hank Willis Thomas and Carly Fischer.
