Creating posters
I had a difficult childhood, I didn’t grow up with any of my parents, an aunt raised me. I love my aunt with all my heart, to me she’s my mom and the woman who gave me everything she could offer. However, I always felt the emptiness of not having my parents around. Since I became a mom I made a promise to myself, which is to give my daughter everything I didn’t have. To start, it is very important to me to listen to what my daughter has to say. Like making her understand from a young age that she has a voice, that I hear what she is saying, and that I am taking her seriously.
Creating posters is a project from a kid to an adult. This project is about things that kids think and they want adults to take them seriously. The idea is that at some point someone will run into these anonymous posters and think about them. Hopefully, it will stay in the minds of whoever reads them and it will cause a little change in their day. I hope this project raises questions like, who wrote this? Why the grammatical issues? Was it a child who wrote this? It must be, or who knows maybe it will make someone smile, maybe someone who is having a bad day.
The most effective way to get to people is visualizing ideas “We frequently present others with “the facts” expecting these to speak for themselves. They rarely do. People like to visualize ideas. Pictures help give a form to abstract theories, causes, and grievances. Spectacles are a public way to draw a picture.” (Duncombe, Lambert 99) Just talking about it is not enough, and that’s why we will continue creating these posters, so people can read them and maybe keep them.
As far as artists that were inspired to create this project:
Gillian Wearing
As human beings, we constantly engage in thinking silently, sometimes we wonder what other people are thinking. Gillian Wearing, a photographer from The United Kingdom, in 1992-1993, asked strangers on the streets of London to write the thoughts passing through their heads onto signs and then photographed them holding up the signs. I thought this was a genius idea because it is interesting to see the faces and then read what they were thinking.
Seth Phillips
Seth Phillips is a content creator on Instagram who creates different posters. “In October 2019, Seth Phillips and Jerry Media founder Elliot Tebele, took to the streets of New York City’s SoHo neighborhood to hold a cardboard sign with a simple protest, “Stop replying-all to company-wide emails.” Since then Seth is very popular in what he does. He just writes quotes that sometimes the majority of us think about but no one says them out loud. This genius idea shows how much people pay attention when there is text on an image. More people will stop and read
Carrie Mae Weems
I am a big fan of Carrie, and especially her work, The Kitchen Table, even though I intentionally take pictures of this project, it has a purpose. Carrie used the Kitchen as a guide, I am using the posters and my daughter. The idea is that more parents get inspired and do as we do. Because this is something that we want other people to identify themselves
Sally Man
Sally's fan is always an inspiration of mine. Her body of work, Immediate Family, is a huge inspiration for my work. That’s why I also took portraits of just her face. Photographing my daughter is super important to me because I can capture in real time her emotions as we hang the posters
Words Cited
Drew, Kimberly. This Is What I Know About Art. Penguin Young Readers Group, 2020.
Duncombe, Stephen, and Steve Lambert. The Art of Activism: Your All-purpose Guide to Making the Impossible Possible. OR Books, LLC, 2021.
References
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wearing-im-desperate-p78348
https://www.instagram.com/dudewithsign/?hl=en
https://www.sallymann.com/new-gallery-1
http://carriemaeweems.net/galleries/kitchen-table.html
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/nan-goldin-beauty-bloodshed/
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