In honor of the voices in Minneapolis that have inspired communities worldwide to stand up, Stand Up Prints will showcase how contemporary printmakers are working to amplify the messages of people and communities who demand racial and social justice in America.
Printmaking has functioned historically as a means of disseminating information and knowledge, but also as a powerful tool for communicating social and political messages to a mass audience. Dissent, outrage, inspiration, hope, and calls for social justice are common themes in prints made by artists including Kara Walker (US), Francisco Goya (Spain), Honore Daumier (France), Jose Guadalope Posada (Mexico), Glenn Ligon (US), Käthe Kollowitz (Germany), Sister Corita Kent (US), and collectives like Taller de Gráfica Popular (Mexico), AfriCOBRA (US) and See Red Women's Workshop (UK).
On view at Highpoint Center for Printmaking from October 23 - November 21, Stand Up Prints is comprised of 62 works by 60 artists from 23 states, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The works were selected by Curator Ellen Y. Tani and Community Guest Curator Esther Callahan from a pool of more than 260 submissions through a national call for entries.
About our guest curator: Ellen Y. Tani, PhD is the 2020-2022 A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts in Washington, DC. A Minnesota native, she has held curatorial positions at the ICA/Boston, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. A historian of contemporary African American art, her broader research within contemporary art engages critical race studies, disability studies, and feminism, and has been supported by the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African and African American Studies, the Clark Art Institute, and the Getty Research Institute.
About our community guest curator: Esther Callahan, a mixed-raced, multi-cultural American born in Minneapolis, MN, moves across disciplines as an organizer, editor, curator, speaker and trainer. Over the past 20+ years in the Twin Cities, she has created and co-created various platforms for cultural production rooted in interrogating the impact of racial and gender equity. Most recently, she was a 2018-2019 Curatorial Fellow at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and co-curated Mapping Black Identities - still on view, and is currently Co-Directing the Emerging Curators Institute, a first of its kind in the region. She holds degrees in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies and Social Justice from the University of Minnesota.
Curators Remarks (video)
From the curators of Stand Up Prints:
“A print happens by way of pressure: it often involves the impression of one physical surface on another,
but images can also be figuratively printed on the mind, in the form of a strong impression or image that lingers in one’s memory. 2020 has been a year of tremendous pressure and lasting impressions. We must recognize, sit with, stand up, and actively negotiate ways to be in a world of turmoil, threat, and uncertainty.
The artists in Stand Up Prints use a variety of printmaking methods to address ideas, imaginaries, and experiences rooted in our very real lives. In dialogue with the print practices on view are featured local artists speaking to perspectives on representation with/in community. From depictions of who we are to critiques of who we are assumed to be, the works here hold space for the paradoxes of today: messages of uplift in mourning, the promises and betrayals of a nation whose mythos idealizes the immigrant experience but whose reactions to demographic change reveal xenophobia, and whose promises of opportunity are deferred for many.
Some offer conceptual prompts for the imagination or declarations of solidarity, some use high-volume typography as a call to action for social change, while others depict everyday heroes, known and unknown, who have fought and died for justice and survival. All are evidence of cultural practices that sustain communities, whether as collective demonstration or individual statement, by making an impression.”
Exhibition Discussion featuring Esther Callahan
with artists Vie Boheme and Mychal Fisher (video)
Exhibition Highlights with Ellen Tani (video)
Featured Work:
Mychal Fisher and Vie Boheme
Curious Moon [Face], 2020
digital film
