SEAN FADER + MAUREEN TOWEY QUEER AMERICAN MEMORIALS
Recently covered in the Whitehot Magazine article "Joy, Community, & Memory," interdisciplinary social practice artists Sean Fader and Maureen Towey have unveiled the design for Queer American Memorials, a nationwide project which aims to unearth erased queer histories and reclaim queer spaces lost to hate. Inspired by the Stumbling Stones in Germany and the Stonewall riots, it is an evolution of Fader’s Insufficient Memory—an interactive Google Earth map which allows you to engage with a digital memorial to LGBTQ+ lives. In 2018, Fader began combing through historical archives to compile a database of every LGBTQ+ person who was murdered in a hate crime in the United States while the Hate Crimes Prevention Act was being debated from 1999 to 2000. The artists, in partnership with MASS Design Group’s the Public Memory and Memorials Lab, have developed physical memorials to mark these locations. They will be working with local communities and organizations creating a constellation of memorials in U.S. cities.
FOR FREEDOMS: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? MONOGRAPH PUBLICATION
Published in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election, For Freedoms and Monacelli announce the organization’s first ever monograph, For Freedoms: Where Do We Go From Here?. The book celebrates more than 550 artist billboards nationwide created between 2016-2023 by the artist-led organization For Freedoms—marking one of the largest public creative collaborations in American history. By appropriating an advertising medium normally used for political campaigning during election seasons, For Freedoms continues a long tradition of artists re-imagining billboards as a space for nuanced inquiry about advertising, popular culture, and American life. These billboards emphasize the For Freedoms mission to model how art can urge communities into greater participation and action, foster nuanced discourse, and they demonstrate how the organization has transformed public commercial space into a showcase for visual art on a large-scale.