"How Will They Know We Were Here? 100 Years Beyond Women’s Suffrage"
Marilyn Artus, Natalie Baxter, Amplifier
Amplifier, Laci Jordan, "Vote for Our Lives" (composite)
The Kniznick Gallery presents "How Will They Know We Were Here? 100 Years Beyond Women’s Suffrage." The exhibition celebrates the power of civic participation in 2020 and acknowledges the 100th anniversary of the U.S. Constitutional amendment that granted some women the right to vote. The 19th Amendment of 1920 did not go far enough for Black and Indigenous women, however, and reflection upon a century as a milestone reminds us that partial progress is not whole progress.
The exhibition includes a large network of individual contributing artists featured through collaborative projects and works led by Marilyn Artus, Natalie Baxter and Amplifier. How Will They Know We Were Here?" recognizes the power of visual art to inspire civic action and demonstrates that artists' contributions within the political sphere are necessary tools for communication. Visual symbols that mirror the suffrage movement anchor the exhibition in familiar forms; American flags, hand-sewn banners, pin cushions and demonstration posters. While these objects resonate with the histories of political action, they emerge from our present-day challenges and obstacles as contemporary artifacts. Traversing the digital and physical spaces that define our political landscape today, the works in the exhibition were created specifically to exert pressure in these arenas. Timed at the centennial of the 19th Amendment, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the movement for racial justice, and encompassing the polarizing 2020 Presidential election — "How Will They Know We Were Here? 100 Years Beyond Women’s Suffrage" raises this question for a future generation that we hope to inspire.