Mural Arts on a grand, collaborative scale
Jane Golden is executive director of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program What can art do? Why does it make a difference? Who gets represented?
Jane Golden
is executive director of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program
What can art do? Why does it make a difference? Who gets represented?
For more than 30 years, these questions have driven the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program to explore the intersection of art and social issues. We've worked in schools, neighborhoods, prisons, and within the social service systems to use art, in the words of curator Liz Thomas, as a "tool, as a catalyst, a process, an object with and for the public" in the city's shared spaces.
Most people who encounter Mural Arts notice us on the wall. The viewer is struck by the imagery or by colors, but the surface design is simply the visible residue of the processes that had a true impact on individuals. We know that art creates enormous change and growth within a community. But to inspire that change, there has to be an opening: a collective moment of hope and the desire to take risks on innovative endeavors.
It's happening in Philadelphia. There is a tangible civic optimism and a profound dedication to this kind of innovation - a pivotal moment in the history of our city, not unlike the one that allowed Mural Arts to emerge and flourish in 1984. This energy, along with our commitment to socially engaged public art, captivates us, draws us in, and leaves us with a great responsibility to embrace the energy and build upon it.
That momentum is behind Mural Arts' largest undertaking ever: Open Source, a monthlong, citywide exhibition of outdoor public art. Inspired by the concept of open-source software, Open Source embraces community partnerships and collaborations. The 14 Open Source artists are creating works that are challenging and inspiring, responding to the outpouring of civic energy with an outpouring of creative energy.
The artists have sparked critical dialogue around pressing social issues, including immigration, sustainability, education, and the criminal justice system.
Sam Durant, an internationally known artist I have admired for years, delved into Philadelphia's prisons. He connected with people in and out of the system, listening as they talked about how their lives have been affected. The result is Labyrinth, a chain-link fence maze installed in Thomas Paine Plaza, across from City Hall. The maze starts as transparent and slowly becomes opaque as visitors add meaningful objects representing their personal stories to the maze's walls. Swoon, a visual artist and printmaker, used Mural Arts' resources to conduct a powerful project that examines mental health and trauma. Creating intimate portraits of the people she met, Swoon tells their stories this month through compelling imagery and spoken word.
Michelle Angela Ortiz's five-part series, Familias Separadas, looks at the lives of our city's immigrant populations and tackles the impact of deportation on families. With our minds and hearts filled with images from around the globe of people looking for shelter, this artistic exploration could not be more timely. Momo, a New Orleans-based muralist, tackled another timely issue: art in education. Using art to teach geometry techniques to bright young people in our art education program, Momo and the students created a mural together in Fishtown. The students will now harness their newfound knowledge and teach these techniques in public workshops this month.
It is our collective creativity that drives us to tackle these explorations, and to generate ideas and dreams for the city we want to see emerge in the 21st century. Open Source is uniquely about Philadelphia: about the civic challenges and opportunities that we face, and the outcomes of collaborative thinking.
A few years ago, Mural Arts could not have taken on this project - the scale and level of collaboration would have been overwhelming. But at this point in our organizational life, much like Philadelphia, we are having a moment: Or artistic and social practices have evolved, and our opportunities to work with phenomenal cultural institutions have multiplied exponentially.
I invite you to join us throughout this month for events at venues such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and FringeArts, among many others, to learn about Open Source and to get a firsthand glimpse of where we are going. We are ready for this discussion, ready to see where it takes us, and to continue our contribution to Philadelphia's cultural moment.