Paper Politics is a major exhibition of politically and socially engaged printmaking. The exhibit showcases print art which uses themes of social justice and global equity to engage community members in political conversation. The show has been displayed at venues throughout the country and in Canada’s biggest political art show ever, and continues to travel.
The exhibition features work by over 200 artists from the US and around the world. It is curated by Josh MacPhee, a Troy, NY-based artist, activist and author, most recently of Stencil Pirates: A Global Study of the Street Stencil.
Paper Politics presents a breathtaking tour of the many modalities of printing: relief, intaglio, lithography, silkscreen, collagraph, monotype, photography. In addition to these techniques, we are delighted to include in the show finely crafted stencils and street printing, traditional media used to convey political thought.
The show’s organizing method draws upon do-it-yourself culture, and like a band on tour, it travels becoming a networking device that connects different artists and communities who were previously unaware of each other’s work.
The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free, sings activist and war veteran Utah Phillips. In this spirit, on January 20th, Chicago artists, writers, performers, activists, and concerned citizens will gather to launch four more years of resistance on the day that George W. Bush delivers his second inaugural address.
The evening will begin with a candle-light procession departing from Wicker Park at 7:30 p.m. from the intersection of Damen and Wicker Park Avenue and arriving at ACME Artworks at 8 p.m. From 8 pm to 1 am, the event will continue at ACME Artworks.
At the gallery, visitors will browse film screenings and artwork by more than 30 local and national talents. . .
People of all ages are invited to attend this thought-provoking gathering, which will feature a chorus of diverse voices and ideas. A local alternative to the Washington D.C.-based Counter Inauguration, the event also will serve as a forum for citizens to unite, speak out, network, and explore different creative avenues of resistance.
In a sense, this is a ‘Marxist’ piece in that it attempts to overcome the alienation that separates the creators of a product and its consumers.
In 2004 I became part of the art collective Tactonic, joining Huong Ngo and Matthew Steinke. The group’s work combined recycled materials, the love of low-technology, and an interest in social interactions. Our collaboration culminated in the PORTOTONIC exhibition, a collection of portable artworks highlighting themes of travel, displacement, and nomadism.
My own piece took the work I had been doing with looped video micro-narratives, and adapted that idea to a distinctly low-tech approach. I built a Zoetrope, an early animation device, which was housed in a vintage child’s suitcase, and created a series of looping animated sequences to be played back using it. Each animation strip focused on displaced people in the midst of difficult transition – deported Jews in the Holocaust, arrested Mexican border crossers, Haitian boat people. The ‘peepshow curiosity’ aspect of the Zoetrope contrasted with the seriousness of the subject matter, calling attention to the relationship between the detached voyeurism of the viewers and the plight of the subjects depicted.
Examines the euphemistic language used by the TV media to describe or camouflage violent acts.
Part Two – ‘3 Memories of War’
Explores the history of how representations of war violence contributed to anti-war movements in Vietnam and World War II.
Part Three – ‘Questioning Entertainment’
Highlights the paradox of violent imagery that is ‘entertaining.’
