Paint the Protest

Andrea Bowers, Raven Chacon, Sharon Hayes, Aaron Huey, Jacqueline Humphries, Francisco Masó, Richard Prince, Dread Scott, Hank Willis Thomas, Rirkrit Tiravanija Off Paradise is pleased to present Paint the Protest, a group exhibition curated by Nancy Spector honoring artists who center cultural dissent in their practices. Dear Natacha, I pitched this exhibition to you during a time of deep despair. The social contract I grew up believing in seemed to be shattering around us in myriad ways. Every news report brought accounts of fundamental rights being eroded by a power-hungry political party that feeds on hate, fear, and greed. How else to explain legislation that suppresses the vote or curtails reproductive freedom or makes teaching the history of this country with all its sins and blemishes a crime? How else to explain climate-change denial? Or the epidemic of school shootings? Or the disavowal of truth and the threats to democracy? I kept wondering whether art—which itself has been the target of so-called culture wars—could ever really have an impact on the consciousness of a country or at least critical constituencies that comprise it. I was haunted by the question: was it more important to be in the trenches, literally enacting dissent, than making exhibitions that describe it? I realized, however, that this is not an either/or proposition. Activism can take many forms, evocation and inspiration among them. Art, in its guise as agit-prop, is a call to action against a specific social or political threat, and there is a rich history of this kind of representation. Such art always accompanies people into the street as they march against injustice in the form of banners and signs, amplifying their grievances and demands. Art can also be complex, even obscurant, in order to infiltrate and destabilize representational systems that maintain the status quo. At the same time, art can bear witness, documenting crimes against humanity and the necessary actions taken to repair those wrongs. But it can also soothe. Art can be a much-needed pause, an invitation for contemplation, a touchstone for pleasure. Even the most ardent activist requires time out to recharge. Paul Chan embraced this truth when he curated a show on bathers and the recuperative power of water as part of an exhibition I once organized called Artistic License. This exhibition threads a needle between representation and real-world dissent. It features the work of artists who, to borrow a phrase from Richard Prince, “paint the protest.” They portray the very language of opposition, the semiotics of rebellion. Their art reminds us of our constitutional right under the first amendment to “peaceably . . . assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” But it also reveals, especially now, the fragility of that right in the face of a democracy under siege, and its virtual non-existence in other parts of the world. As I write this, in September of 2022, people in Iran are risking arrest or even death to protest the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was taken into custody by the “morality police” for some minor infraction of their dress code for women. And Russian citizens are defying authoritarian law to demonstrate against Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Paint the Protest is, in the end, an expression of hope. It is a reminder that as the public, in the words of Rebecca Solnit, “we are a civil society, the superpower whose nonviolent means are sometimes, for a shining moment, more powerful than violence, more powerful than regimes and armies.” The works in this exhibition reflect that shining moment—the opposite of despair—when a sense of moral outrage and compassion for one another conjoin into a collective demand for equity and truth. While the future is unknowable, we must believe that in our small cultural corner of the planet, art can and will be a beacon for change. With gratitude, Nancy We are pleased to partner for this exhibition with Downtown for Democracy; all proceeds from the sale of their multiples by Paul Chan, Jonathan Horowitz, Marilyn Minter, Arlene Shechet, and Jonas Wood will support their new get-out-the-vote initiative, Weekly Senator, a member-based platform that pools small dollar donations, streamlining giving to crucial Senate races. Upcoming Programing • Conversation on Art and Activism (after the Midterms) with Marilyn Minter, Hank Willis Thomas, and author and film producer Tanya Selvaratnam. Thursday, November 17, 6:30 pm. • Pulitzer-prize winning composer Raven Chacon will perform at Off Paradise on Sunday, December 4 at 3pm. Please save the date. Chacon will perform an encore of a sonic meditation on the histories of Alcratraz—recently staged in situ—and its occupation for nineteen months beginning in November 1969 by the group Indians of All Tribes, as a protest regarding civil rights abuses at that time. The sound piece draws in part on archival audio footage of Radio Free Alcatraz, which broadcast news of the occupation from the island every weeknight for most of the first year of the protest. See www.offparadise.com for updates. Rirkrit Tiravanija’s NFT, untitled 2021 (rich bastards beware) is on loan from the K21 Collection, courtesy of Kanon, which is made physically possible through the RQDQ borrowing platform and the ERC721Q borrowing protocol developed by Kanon. — Off Paradise is a gallery located on Walker Street founded by Natacha Polaert in the fall of 2019. The name evokes the old neighborhood of Five Points, at the center of which was a small, triangular park, full of hopes and grime, called Paradise Square. It also invokes Paradise Alley, the artists’ and poets’ colony on the then-godforsaken corner of Avenue A and East 11th Street that is referenced in Jack Kerouac’s novel The Subterraneans. Off Paradise is a fictional place, right off Paradise, adjacent to it, but not exactly it. Nancy Spector is a curator and writer. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Marilyn Minter and Gina Nanni at Downtown for Democracy, Michael Bullock at Weekly Senator, Kanon, Matthew Arkell, Olivia DiVecchia, Matt Gaughan, J Grabowski, Diana Murphy, Sutton Murray, Jules Spector, Emily Stevenson, and Leni Wolfenson.

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