Let Art Be Training in the Practice of Freedom is a gathering place. An archive, music, receipts, living memory, direct action manuals, conversations and relations, movement-generated theory, city-wide open files.

Play. Ask questions. Be on your way. Play some more.

Empty Circle
April 29 - May 27, 2023, Mixed media

This Place (A photography exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, 2016) shows empty landscapes labeled with Hebrew names, which displace indigenous Arabic names. The photos repeat the colonial myth of “A land without a people for a people without a land.” Separation wall and checkpoints are barely present, as are Palestinians. Meanwhile, family portraits of Israeli settlers normalize how land is stolen from Palestine.

This Place Is Not This Place (Decolonial Cultural Front (DCF) Prints), 2022. One color screen print of renamed and reclaimed wall text on top of digital reproductions of Stephen Shore exhibition prints, both from the “This Place” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, 2016. 24” x 29.25”. Prints are housed in a handmade red cloth folder with white screen printed logo. Decolonial Cultural Front archival material included in folder. Prints are signed and numbered on the back.

Portfolio of 5, Edition of 2.

Printed for an exhibition in Beirut at the Institute for Palestine Studies.

This is the only flag I pledge allegiance to.

One color screen print on old studio rag,
15.25” x 12.25”, (Unique).

Screen printed on paper, 25” x 19”,
Portfolio of 12, Open Edition.

is an action-oriented cultural organizing initiative facilitated by Decolonize This Place hosted for three months this past spring by the Art Gallery of Guelph. This initiative is intended as a platform and catalyst for building relationships of decolonial solidarity at multiple geographical scales. The project is anchored by the presence in the gallery and online of the Decolonial Operations Manual, a freely-distributed tool for study, reflection, and action that embodies the principle of movement-generated media. The manual and other materials presented at the gallery will function as frames for a series of gatherings and conversations with friends, comrades, and potential collaborators that will flow into a longer-term organizing initiative.

Art Gallery of Guelph
January 21 – April 25, 2021

To download the Decolonial Operations Manual

Big prints of Harriet Tubman on William Morris' “Thistle” (Gold), 2020, Two color screen print on kraft paper, 72" x 52". Signed and numbered on the back, Open edition.

Original photo by Horatio Seymour Squyer, Circa 1885 - National Portrait Gallery.

Exhibitions:

Good Trouble!, White Box NY
Oct. 10 – Nov. 11, 2020
Curated by Raul Zamudio and Juan Puntes

Mask, 2016 - 2019
screen print on cotton fabric, 27” x 27”,
open edition.

Keffiyehs masks were first printed for a Palestine action out of Artists Space in December of 2016. In 2019 they were screen printed for that years Indigenous Peoples Day, 4th Anti-Columbus Day Tour.

NO NEW JAILS ON STOLEN LAND
RETURN THE LAND TO ITS PEOPLE
DIVEST FROM PRISONS AND REINVEST IN OUR COMMUNITIES

THE FOURTH ANTI-COLUMBUS DAY TOUR
It has been four years since our communities converged at this museum. Then, we put forth the following demands: Rename the Day, Respect the Ancestors, Remove the Statue. After three annual gatherings, none of these demands have been met. The museum remains silent about calls for the replacement of Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day, which has been enacted by dozens of cities and states around the country. The museum is annotating some of its displays, but it uses these as token gestures to insulate itself from calls to overhaul the framework of the museum as a whole. The museum has claimed it has no jurisdiction over the Roosevelt monument. Yet it has installed an educational plaque on the structure asking its viewers to consider “both sides” of the genocidal history it represents, perfectly in keeping with the recommendations by the city’s Monument Commission, which voted to re-sanctify both the Roosevelt monument and the widely despised Columbus monument at 59th street. This museum is maintained largely by taxpayers and it stands on “public” land, which we know is occupied ancestral territory of the Lenape. Yet the institution has failed to respond to the concerns voiced by the diverse communities of the city that it claims to represent and serve. On this Indigenous People’s Day, we declare our intent to intensify the crisis of legitimacy faced by this institution. We now highlight the presence on the board of figures like Richard Lefrak, one of the wealthiest real-estate predators in New York, and a donor to the 2020 campaign of Donald Trump; Rebekah Mercer, a primary architect of the ascendency of Trump in 2016; Jacklyn Bezos, mother of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and even the great-grandson of Theodore Roosevelt himself. Whether conservative or liberal in their political outlook, those profiteering from genocide, displacement, dispossession, and incarceration should fear our movement as it grows. Decolonization, Abolition, Anti-Imperialism, and Anti-Capitalism inform our work and animate our desires, which point far beyond the museum and extend to the structures of power and wealth at the city at large.

FROM CRISIS TO DECOLONIZATION
To Adam Weinberg and the Board of Trustees

It has been six months since the crisis began. The Whitney Museum has a teargas problem.

The staff have spoken. Community groups have spoken. Scholars have spoken. Journalists have spoken. Artists have spoken, including 52 participants in the Biennial. Everyone agrees that Warren Kanders must go. Yet the museum remains silent. What will it take to finally remove Kanders from the board?

We know this goes beyond Kanders. He is a stand-in for an entire system. Toxic philanthropy can no longer be normalized. The landscape is changing, as we can see with the repudiation of the Sacklers by the Met, Guggenheim, and Tate.

Had you asked, we would have told you: the removal of Kanders is a gesture of good faith by the museum, a signal that you grasp the historical moment, and that you recognize business cannot go on as usual. It would open a pathway for a collective process to address deeper structural questions about the distribution of power and the shape of institutional governance.

The crisis started with teargas, and it now points to decolonization. In the open letter signed by more than 400 writers, curators, and artists calling for the removal of Kanders, they invoke the prospect of a Decolonization Commission that would “include community stakeholders and guided by a variety of urgent principles: Indigenous land rights and restitution, reparations for enslavement and its legacies, the dismantling of patriarchy, workplace democracy, de- gentrification, climate justice, and sanctuary from border regimes and state violence more generally.”

The letter reminds us that “There is no blueprint for decolonization.” We agree. The process is the plan, and we are here for it.

A Notice to the Whitney Museum

We could have shut the museum down today. But after nine weeks of action, we offer the museum leadership a final window to do the right thing: remove Kanders and participate in the formation of a process with stakeholders: staff, community groups, scholars, artists, and more.

Fall is the deadline. We will be back if necessary, and our tactics will escalate further. In the meantime, we expect others will act and organize.

When We Breathe, We Breathe Together

One of our banners today reads “When We Breathe, We Breathe Together.” This is the same banner that was used in shutting down Brooklyn Bridge in 2014, after a Grand Jury failed to indict the cop who choked Eric Garner to death. As we speak, Officer Anthony Pantaleo is now undergoing a departmental “disciplinary trial,” one that by design cannot result in criminal charges. Our allies, including Why Accountability, NYC Shut It Down and Copwatch Patrol Unit, have been at the forefront of the struggle to hold this killer cop and the NYPD accountable for their violence. We know that the same forces that stole the life of Eric Garner are those represented by Warren Kanders, who counts the NYPD among his clients. The banner also has the design of the keffiyeh, which signals solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle. From Staten Island to Gaza: chokeholds, teargas, handcuffs, batons, bullets, body armor, occupation, displacement, land theft, incarceration...These are the sources of Kanders’ wealth and profit, which he launders into his profile as a board member at this Whitney Museum.

A Note on White Supremacy and the Reviews of the 2019 Whitney Biennial

We want to congratulate the 75 artists in the 2019 Whitney Biennial artists, over half of whom are artists of color. This is the most diverse Whitney Biennial to date. Shout out to you for making history with your work, and also for the public stand that 52 of you have taken against Kanders. Your presence is monumental, and you are sculpting the future of the arts landscape.

The Whitney Biennial has taken an important step in decentering whiteness as an exhibition. But it remains embedded in a museum and a broader artworld that has white supremacy at its core. It cannot be separated from the settler-colonial condition, and the interlocking systems of capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and imperialism that affect how contemporary art is produced, circulated, and critiqued. We see this play out in the reviews of the biennial so far. We note the condescension of those white art critics who are now lamenting that the artists in the Biennial are not properly political, that they “play it safe.”

White supremacy doesn’t get to decide whether or not our work or actions are “radical” enough to liberate our peoples from white supremacy. White supremacy doesn’t have the tools to examine white supremacy. White supremacy doesn’t get to dictate whether or not our frustration with white supremacy is expressed most effectively via “melancholy,” “outrage,” or anything in between. White supremacy doesn’t get to measure the level of risk (or the level of “safety”) we take in resisting white supremacy. In fact, white supremacy gets no say in the ways in which we choose to survive, live, and fight as people of color in this world. White supremacy doesn’t get to separate us from each other in the name of art and protest, while uplifting its own dubious agenda. We won’t let it. So, make no mistake, when we resist Warren Kanders on the board, we are pushing back and resisting against Whiteness dictating what constitutes contemporary art and aesthetics.

Nine Weeks of Art and Action: Participating Groups

Veterans Against the War, Art Space Sanctuary, Brooklyn Anti-Gentrification Network, Brooklyn Defense Committee, Chinatown Art Brigade, Comité Boricua En La Diáspora, Copwatch Patrol Unit, Critical Resistance, Crystal House, Decolonial Time Zone, (De)Institutional Research Team (DIRT), Direct Action Front for Palestine, Equality 4 Flatbush, Hydro Punk, The Illuminator, Insurgent Poets Society, Global Ultra Luxury Faction, Mahina Movement, Mi Casa No Es Su Casa, Mobile Print Power, Movement to Protect the People, New Sanctuary Coalition, Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, No New Jails NYC, NYC Shut It Down, NYC Solidarity with Palestine, Queens Anti-Gentrification Project, Queer Youth Power, P.A.I.N. Sackler, People’s Cultural Plan, Semillas Collective, South Asia Solidarity Initiative, Sunset Park for a Liberated Future, Take Back the Bronx, The Whitest Cube, War Resisters League, We Will Not Be Silent, Why Accountability, Within Our Lifetime, and more.

What art looks like when you’re at the Whitney Museum of American Art and you know where the money came from, then you see the Warhol show. This series remixes images taken at the Andy Warhol — From A to B and Back Again exhibition and posted on social media. They were part of the first wave of Decolonize This Place’s efforts to have Warren B. Kanders removed from the Museums board.

PUBLIC LETTER ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY, 2018 

On October 8th, we will be returning to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) for the third year in a row. Unlike the guided anti-Columbus tours of previous years, the next visit to the museum’s dusty cultural halls will be fully participatory and will culminate with a People’s Assembly. Why the change of plan?

Since our first action in 2016, the concept of “decolonizing museums” has entered the mainstream of public opinion. Awareness about the topic has also gone international, impacting museums in the UK and Europe faced with similar challenges to the AMNH. Clearly, the public appetite for pro-active change has grown in scope and urgency, and museum officials have been scrambling to respond. Despite our city’s preferred self-image as on the cutting edge, New York’s major museums have barely registered this seismic shift, and the AMNH, which has the most heavy lifting to do, risks being left even further behind— solidifying its reputation as a chronically outdated institution, crammed with deeply colonial and faulty representations of culture. While the framing of these contents is firmly rooted in the distant past, the exhibits perform the daily work of reinforcing racist legacies that reside in the minds of the AMNH’s visitors.

So, too, the closed room conversations we have conducted periodically with AMNH curators and officials seem to have run their course. Those we meet with are usually always in agreement with us about the need for a decolonization process (with full attention to demands for reparations and repatriation of human remains and sacred objects) but we feel the oppressive weight of institutional inertia in the room, and the responses are too measured and painfully slow in coming. In a recent correspondence with us, the AMNH acknowledged the problem: “We recognize that the Museum’s 150-year history and that of its collections are embedded within the larger history…of western colonization….We also recognize that some aspects of the Museum’s cultural halls are out of date and include presentations and treatments that do not accurately represent either the cultures presented or the values and perspectives of the Museum today.” Accordingly, the AMNH has finally begun its overhaul of the Northwest Coast Hall. But, at the current rate of progress, it will take another fifty years to re-do all of the cultural halls. In the meantime, the cultural violence will continue, and generations of young people will be exposed to the harms generated by degrading representations as they pass through the museum.

As part of our children’s education, they have a right to know the full story behind the collecting and the exhibiting of the museum’s contents. They should be told how and why the AMNH was the center of the eugenics movement in the early part of the twentieth century. They should learn about the real Teddy Roosevelt, strenuously driven, as he was, by the ideals of male chauvinism and white supremacy, and how those socially destructive values were, and still are, embedded in the museum’s classification and framing of materials. They should be informed about the ongoing contribution of these misbeliefs to present-day racism, sexism, and homophobia. They should be prompted to ask why the museum only exhibits the culture of non-Euro/settler peoples i.e. the colonized populations of the world. And, ultimately, they should be encouraged to consider why such cultural halls belong in a museum of natural history at all.

The AMNH likes to describe itself as an educational institution, but there is nothing in the museum that would inspire schoolchildren to ask such questions, even though hundreds of thousands are required to visit annually as part of the New York public school curriculum. As for higher education in the AMNH’s would-be peer institutions, the museum tends to feature only in college curricula as a case-study in colonial nostalgia. In our universities, course syllabi are constantly being amended to reflect new schools of thought and breakthroughs in historical knowledge. By contrast, most of the museum’s dioramas and exhibits have not been altered in many decades, and many are untouched since they were installed a hundred years ago.

Nor has the museum lent its influential voice to the two other causes we have brought to its doors.

1. It has been silent on the issue of renaming Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day, and it has yet to move forward on the acknowledgement that its building sits on occupied Lenape land—a decision wholly under its own control. We have condemned this position of non-advocacy and this reluctance to adopt a Acknowledgement as aggressive actions against Indigenous peoples. We have demanded that the museum take immediate steps to remedy the harms.

2. In the course of the debate generated by the Mayor’s commission to review “symbols of hate” in New York City, the AMNH made no public comment on the fate of the equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt which greets visitors to the museum on Central Park West. The commission was split over the decision to remove the monument—a full half of its members voted for its relocation. Given how integral the statuary and hagiography of Roosevelt is to the AMNH, the museum should have taken on its share of responsibility for addressing the Monument’s future rather than punting the decision wholly to the City. Its officials have privately described to us their shame at having to pass by the monument every day, and the time is now long overdue for them to address their “Roosevelt problem.” We have demanded that the AMNH leadership publicly state its resolve to rethink this deeply flawed adoration of Roosevelt, which confronts visitors at the entrance and which is further imposed on them inside the museum itself, in the lavish homage on display in the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda and the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall.

The museum is not a private institution, it relies heavily on public funding (upwards of $17 million annually), and so we all have a right to insist on accountability. As people gather on October 8th, we will ask them to help reclaim the space of the halls through self-organized tours and to imagine a different kind of institution. The assembly to follow will feature reports and testimony from these tours. We will acknowledge the decolonial proposals presented over the last two years, and consider the museum’s responses, as outlined above. With these in mind, the assembly will formulate new demands, for adoption by those present. Participants will pledge to pursue these demands with the AMNH’s senior officials and board members, and with elected city officials who are ex officio trustees.

Decolonize This Place
NYC Stands with Standing Rock 
Signatories: American Indian Community House, Black Youth Project 100, South Asia Solidarity Initiative, Chinatown Art Brigade, Take Back the Bronx, The People’s Cultural Plan, Working Artists and the Greater Economy

Anti-Columbus Day Tour PT. III, brochure/map

Harriet Tubman on William Morris' “Thistle” (Gold), 2018, Two color screen print on handmade gold leaf wallpaper, 37" x 23.5". Signed and numbered on the back. Edition of 22.
 

Original photo by Horatio Seymour Squyer, Circa 1885 - National Portrait Gallery.

Exhibitions:
Multilayered: New Prints 2018/Summer
Selected by Juan Sánchez
June 26 – Sept. 22, 2018

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE’S DAY, 2017

We begin today by acknowledging that we are standing on the ancestral territory of the Lenni Lenape. This was, and is, their land—a reality that all of us who have come here must acknowledge. Our action today, at it’s most fundamental level, stands in solidarity with the Lenape, and all Indigenous peoples, whose land was stolen to create the settler states and who continue to live under siege, surveillance, and colonial structural violence on their own occupied land. We stand with our comrades advancing Indigenous resurgence and decolonization through ongoing settler colonial oppression. We stand in support of the return of their lands. This is where we must begin.


We are gathered here at the American Museum of Natural History to issue three demands:

RENAME — Many American cities have bowed to the obvious and renamed Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Why is New York not among them? There is no reason for holding out any longer. It’s time for the Mayor and City Council to stand on the right side of history. New York City sits on the territory of the Lenape, and over one hundred thousand Indigenous people live on this territory today-- more than any other city in the United States! Let’s honor the rich legacy and achievements of Native Americans and discard the unsavory celebration of imperial conquest. This public holiday must be relaunched as an occasion to dignify our Indigenous brothers and sisters, it should no longer commemorate a figure widely associated with exploitation and enslavement.

REMOVE — The equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt on Central Park West outside the American Museum of Natural History has often been cited as the most hated monument in New York City. It’s easy to see why. Flanked by figures that appear to be Native and African stereotypes, and are in a posture of subservience, the statue is a stark embodiment of the white patrician supremacy that Roosevelt himself espoused and promoted, and it is an affront to all who enter the museum. Statuary is not forever, and a monument that appears to glorify racial and gender hierarchies should be retired from public view. The movement that began in the South with the removal of Confederate flags and generals from public display has come to New York. The statue is city-owned, and it sits on Parks Department land. The Mayor’s commission to review “symbols of hate” should prioritize its removal, and City Council members should all agree--it’s time to take it down.

RESPECT — Why are Indigenous, Asian, Latin American, and African cultural artifacts still in the American Museum of Natural History, while their Greek and Roman counterparts are housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art across the park? Because New York’s premier scientific museum continues to honor the bogus racial classification that assigned colonized peoples to the domain of Nature and the colonizers to the realm of Culture. It’s time to accept that The Hall of African Peoples does not belong in the same exhibition framework as The Akeley Hall of African Mammals, and that Indigenous or Asian cultures cannot be represented in ways that are akin to the display of fossils and meteorites. These arrangements should be reviewed by a Decolonization Commission and reconceived by representatives of the “exhibited” populations. Human remains, sacred things, and objects of power stolen from Indigenous peoples should be placed under the authority of the descendants. The museum, which receives $17m of public cultural funding annually (a sum greater than that allotted to the entire borough of Queens), has long been an embarrassment to New Yorkers and out of towners. It needs a serious renovation, to be undertaken by a diverse range of curators drawn from the populations featured in the museum.


NYC Stands with Standing Rock
Decolonize This Place
Black Youth Project 100
South Asian Solidarity Initiative
Eagle and Condor Community Center

Anti-Columbus Day Tour PT. II, brochure/map

https://hyperallergic.com/404749/2nd-annual-anti-columbus-day-tour-american-museum-of-natural-history/

Decolonize this Place (DTP) is an action-oriented movement and decolonial formation in New York City and beyond. Facilitated by MTL+, DTP consists of grassroots groups and art collectives that seek to resist, unsettle, and reclaim the city. The organizing and action bring together many strands of analysis and traditions of resistance: Indigenous insurgence, Black liberation, free Palestine, free Puerto Rico, the struggles of workers and debtors, de-gentrification, migrant justice, dismantling patriarchy, and more. In some cases, we have used cultural institutions as platforms and amplifiers for movement demands, but we do not understand the transformation of these institutions as an end in and of itself. We aim to cultivate a politics of autonomy, solidarity, and mutual aid within a long-term, multi-generational horizon of decolonial, anti-capitalist, and feminist liberation that is animated by Grace Lee Boggs' question: "What time is it on the clock of the world?" For us, decolonization necessitates abolition. But what does abolition demand? Not only does it demand the abolition of prisons and police, bosses and borders, but as Fred Moten and Stefano Harney write, it’s “the abolition of a society that could have prisons, that could have slavery, that could have the wage, and therefore not abolition as the elimination of anything but abolition as the founding of a new society.”

further information can be found at www.decolonizethisplace.org

#decolonizethisplace

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE’S DAY, 2016
DECLARATION
 

WE ARE HERE, in this museum, with our friends, families and communities. We begin by acknowledging that we are standing on occupied Lenape land. Although it is labelled as a Natural History museum, it includes displays of Indigenous and other colonized peoples.

Though its exhibits change from year to year, this museum is frozen in time, bound by nineteenth-century racial classifications that designated human populations as “primitive” or “civilized.” Generations of curators have continued this racist legacy, and millions of visitors are invited to take them for granted.

We are here to amplify the tradition of resistance to this way of depicting history, and to respect the Indigenous artifacts and ancestral presence that have been collected, through acts of violent appropriation, and gathered, under this roof. We are here to protest this monument of white supremacy on a day that should be renamed. And we are here to demand the removal of the Teddy Roosevelt statue that stands outside the museum. 

This is an alternative tour of the exhibits on the Second Floor. It is only a sample of how deeply flawed the museum continues to be

We are gathered here at the American Museum of Natural History to issue three demands:

RESPECT – New York’s premier scientific museum continues to honor the bogus racial classification that assigned colonized peoples to the domain of Nature here, and Europeans to the realm of Culture, across the park in the Met. We demand that the museum’s display arrangements and classifications be reconceived by curatorial representatives of the “exhibited” populations, and that human remains, sacred things, and objects of power stolen from Indigenous peoples should be returned.

REMOVE – The equestrian status of Theodore Roosevelt outside the American Museum of Natural History is a stark embodiment of the white supremacy that Roosevelt espoused and promoted. It is an affront to all who pass it on entering the museum, but especially to African and Native Americans. A monument that appears to glorify racial hierarchies should be retired from public view. We demand that City Council members vote to remove this monument to racial conquest.

RENAME – It’s time for the Mayor and City Council to rename Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. New York City sits on the territory of the Lenape, and over one hundred thousand Indigenous people live on this territory today. We demand that this holiday be relaunched as an occasion to dignify our Indigenous brothers and sisters, and it should no longer commemorate a figure widely associated with exploitation and enslavement.

Anti-Columbus Day Tour brochure/map

2016
Acrylic paint on canvas, 360" X 48"

with AKA Exit Collective member Vaimoana Litia Makakaufaki Niumeitolu
using original text by Jaskiran Dhillon

Description:
The Decolonial Cultural Front: Red Carpet acknowledges in painted English text, that wherever you are, you are indigenous land. The red carpet also has traditional Kupesi (designs) from Ngatu, an artfrom made in Tonga in the South Pacific. Ngatu is made by groups of women/trans and their children. It is what the people in Tonga are wrapped in as babies and buried in when they pass away. When Ngatu is given, it is the highest form of honor. The red carpet honors indigenous land, people, sovereignty and solidarity. Also, because it is a red carpet, it is meant to be walk on. .

1st Installation  
Mall Entrance to the Smithsonian Arts & Industries building, Washington D.C., part of the CrossLines: A Culture Lab on Intersectionality at the Smithsonian Arts & Industries building Memorial Day weekend 2016

2nd Installation
NYC Stands With Standing Rock Action
Washington Square Park, New York, New York

2016
A collaboration with Vaimoana Litia Makakaufaki Niumeitolu

This work focuses on the social isolation of imprisonment and questions whether time in prison warrants the added penalty of exclusion from public life and art. The Mural Mandalas draw from Ngatu textiles from Tonga and street art in New York. The mandalas and film grew out of interviews with Judith Vazquez and Ojore Lutalo, both have been incarcerated. The Mural Ngatu Mandala & Film Installation honors Assata Shukur, Oscar Lopez Rivera, Ojore Lutalo and Judith Vasques. 

Installation at CrossLines: A Culture Lab on Intersectionality at the Smithsonian Arts & Industries building, 2016

Mural Ngatu Mandala, 2016
acrylic on canvas
Sixteen 5' x 5' canvases installed on the floor of the North Hall of the Smithsonian Arts & Industries building

2016
White Box Installation
#makeamericagreatagain
Curated by Raul Zamudio and
Juan Puntes
Co-curated by Blanca de la Torre

2014
screen print on reflective vinyl
44 prints, each 24" X 18"
96" x 198" installation view
flash photography

Decolonial Cultural Front (DCF) Prints, 2016

Rename and Reclaim wall text on top of Stephen Shore photographs both from the This Place exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.

Image Size: 20” x 25.25”, digital images.

2016
Decolonize This Place Action inside the Brooklyn Museum

We are here, in this place, with our friends, families, and communities. This place, the place of the museum, claims to be dedicated to cultural enrichment, public education, and the housing of great works of art, all in the name of the People. Yet this place also exists within an expanded field of capitalism, imperialism, and white supremacy. This place, the Brooklyn Museum, lends itself to these oppressive powers. This place allows itself to become complicit with processes of racist displacement from Crown Heights to the West Bank of occupied Palestine. This place happily facilitates gentrification, sporting a 1% real estate developer on its board even while claiming to serve the very communities being driven from their homes. This place proudly hosts an exhibition that aestheticizes apartheid and settler-colonialism--even while patting itself on the back for displaying works of art produced by the liberation movements of the past century. As artists, as workers, as citizens and noncitizens, we are here in the living spirit of decolonial struggles. We are conjuring the powers of our ancestors to begin decolonizing this place, liberating this place, and returning this place to the People.

In solidarity with all workers, Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.) stager an occupation of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City

At noon today, a group of artists and activists unfurled a large parachute and dropped thousands of On Kawara-influenced flyers marking May Day 2015, in the atrium of the Guggenheim Museum, while demanding to meet with a member of the institution’s board of trustees to discuss the labor conditions at its Abu Dhabi site.

2014

collaboration with Direct Action Front for Palestine
11 Banners, black cotton fabric and house paint
56" x 360"

RESPOND
Smack Mellon
Exhibition Dates: Jan. 17 - Feb. 22, 2015

Decolonize This Place
Artists Space Books & Talks
September 2016 - December 2016

My “GAZA Love” screen print was more influenced by General Idea’s AIDS piece and Rage Against The Machine’s “Renegades” album cover than Robert Indiana. However I realize neither transgression would have been possible without Indiana’s iconic LOVE.

2014 -Ongoing
Three color screen print
on 6ply poster board
22.25" x 22"
Signed, Open Edition

GAZA LOVE print was gifted to the British Museum in 2016 by the Palestine Poster Project Archive.
 

Strike MoMA, 2021
Week 7: Call to Action

Nakba 74, 2022
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

Gaza Love Mural, 2015
Al Walaja, West Bank, Palestine

Gaza In Our Hearts, 2014
City Wide, NYC

Goen makes use of the iconographic “LOVE” lettering first rendered in a 1970 sculpture by Robert Indiana and later featured on the first stamp on the theme of love to be issued by the U.S. Postal Service, in 1973.

Goen’s transformation of the word “LOVE” into “GAZA” is provocative yet disarming, associating love with a geographical location that Americans have neglected, ignored, misunderstood, and defamed. The familiar, joyful lettering, recast in a bold palette (the Palestinian colors of red, black, white, and green), compels a reconsideration of “Gaza.” For those already in solidarity with Palestine, it affirms the affection. The genius of this poster is that the image can be interpreted from yards away. This made it extremely popular with demonstrators in the summer of 2014.

- Catherine Baker,  Mondoweiss

2013
mix media
70' x 32'

DUMBO ARTS FESTIVAL
Friday September 27th – Sunday September 29th
Location: Water Street Btwn Main & Washington Streets, Brooklyn NY 11201
 

Using 1,600 transparent colored flags, in reference to the 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. White House address, to make up the installation "Who’s Chelsea Manning?". The installation will appear, from afar, as a mammoth pixelated image of that famous face and cap of Private Manning, hanging across Water Street as part of this year's DUMBO Arts Festival.
 

The 70-by-32-foot installation "Who’s Chelsea Manning?"  at the DUMBO Arts Festival aims to replace the simplistic view of the 25-year-old Manning, sentenced to 35 years in prison for exposing some of the US government’s most extraordinary war crimes. Convicted of several counts of espionage, though cleared of “aiding the enemy,” Goen believes Manning is guilty of little more than informing the US population of the government’s illegal torture centers and civilian murders in Iraq. The Wikileaks video that went viral showing US Apache helicopter snipers expressing bloodlust as they killed 2 Reuters reporters and the family who came to rescue them is perhaps the most famous example of Manning’s exposure of government secrets.
 

As Gregg Leslie, legal defense director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said following the conviction, "Whistle-blowers always know they are taking risks, and the more they reveal, the bigger the threat is against them. But we know they are not betraying the government. And when they contribute vital information to an important public debate, it should not be a crime--especially the kind of crime that sends you to jail for the rest of your life."
 

The sheer scale of Goen’s “Who’s Chelsea Manning?” is in­tended to force an open conversation not only about Manning, but also about what constitutes an accurate image of this figure whom defenders see as a truth-teller and government prosecutors as an Enemy of the State. The closer you view the work, the more confused the image; the farther away, the more it comes into focus.

2013

57th Presidential Inauguration
Five drone strikes in five days 1/19/13 -1/23/13
large works on canvas.

screen print on primed canvas

Text: January 19, 2013 Yemen. The first drone strike missed its target; missiles landed in a nearby orchard. January 19, 2013 Yemen. Later in the evening, 4 people were killed when a drone fired missiles in Marib. January 19, 2013 Yemen. Up to 6 people were killed in Wadi Abida. It was the last strike of the night. Inauguration Day, January 20, 2013 Yemen. 3 people killed in a car. 'Their identities are not yet known.' January 21, 2013 Yemen. Up to 4 men were driving on the Sanaa-Marib highway when a US drone fired missiles at them. January 22, 2013 Yemen. An evening strike targeted a vehicle in al-Jawf, killing 3-5 people. January 23, 2013 Yemen. Up to 7 people died when a drone destroyed a Toyota. Bodies were burned 'beyond recognition.' January 23, 2013 Yemen. A second possible drone attack missed its target and left 2 children dead in their home.

2012
performance

Cultural Transference
Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts - Project Space
June 15 - July 27, 2012
 

United We Stand Stand is a performance by Dread Scott & Kyle Goen. In the project Scott & Goen are vendors operating a stand that sells t-shirts bearing the popular slogan “United We Stand.” The slogan became a rallying cry in the US after the September 11, 2001 attacks, affirming US patriotism and unquestioning acceptance of American wars and occupations. The United We Stand Stand will feature shirts with this slogan but unlike the shirts that they reference, they will not be emblazoned with the US flag. Rather the slogan will appear beneath the Iraqi, Afghan, Pakistani and Iranian flags. Scott and Goen will attempt to sell the shirts and will engage in conversation with the public as they do so. 

The performance will take place on the sidewalk in New York’s Times Square, a destination of tourists and an icon of America. As an absurd gesture, the performance takes the entrepreneurship of street vendors selling inexpensive wares as its foundation. By selling shirts in a public square calling for unity with countries that the US is waging war in or occupying, the performance encourages people to think about patriotism, including but not limited to US patriotism, the moral responsibility of people in the US for the wars waged in our name, consumer culture, fashion and the logic of (petty) capitalism. 

The shirts themselves are limited edition screen-printed artworks. 

2011
screen print on paper
21.5" x 16.5"

Portfolio of 7

Occupy Wall Street brought a much welcomed breath of fresh air. Dread Scott and I created a set of screen prints where they connect the international aspirations of OWS and its interconnections and roots in the Arab Spring and occupations in Europe.  The signs exist in English, Arabic, Greek, Italian & Spanish.  About 80 of each language were produced and most were given away at a Occupy Wall Street demonstrations on 11/17/2011. The few that remain have been signed and editoned.

The Dash Gallery
March 25th - May 6th, 2010
hosted by Erykah Badu and
Damon Dash
 

War Crimes Seal, 2007
metallic screen print on Magnani paper
32” x 28” 
Edition of 10

Homes & Gardens, (Blue, Purple, Orange & Green), 2008
acrylic, screen printing ink on canvas, 
56” X 36”
 

Peoples Rebel (Zapatista), 2010
One color screen print on William Morris wallpaper sample
21” X 21” (framed)
1. Fruit (Pomegranate) 2. Arbutus 3. Thistle 4. Sunflower Etch
5. Larkspur (White on Pale Green) 6. Pink & Rose 7. Daisy
8. Medway 9. Chrysanthemum 10. Wild Tulip 11. Bird & Anemone
12. St. James Damask
 

Leila Khalid (gold garden tulips), 2009
gold leaf, acrylic, screen printing ink on canvas
56” x 36”

(Three) Mandela, 2008
screen print on camouflage fabric
56” X 42”
 

Double Assata, 2008
screen print on fabric
32” X 48”
 

Panthers, 2010
Bobby Seale
Huey P. Newton
Eldridge Cleaver
Fred Hampton
acrylic on canvas
82” X 66”

Homes & Gardens, (Gold), 2009
gold leaf, acrylic, screen printing ink on Magnani paper
41.375”  X 29.625” framed, (unique prints)
 

Iraqi Flag, 2009 (unique)
repurposed American flag and screen printing ink
49.25” X 79”
 

Iraqi Flag (Interim), 2010 (unique)
repurposed American flag and screen printing ink
49.25” X 79”
Adopted in 2008 for a year and was intended to be an interim measure until a permanent solution to the flag issue is found.

Iraqi Flag, 2009
Repurposed American flag and screen printing ink (unique)
49.25" x 79"

Iraqi Flag (Interim), 2010
Repurposed American flag and screen printing ink (unique)
51" x 85.5"

On 26 April 2004 the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) announced a new flag for post-Saddam Iraq. On 22 January 2008, the Council of the Representatives approved its new “interim” design for the National Flag was confirmed by Law 9 of 2008 as the compromise temporary replacement for the Ba'athist Saddam-era flag. In this current version, the three stars were removed. The parliament intended that the new design last for one year, after which a final decision on the flag would be made. However, the flag law was reviewed in parliament on 30 August 2009. In 2012, there was an effort to replace the flag with a new design.

Acts of Sedition, 2016
White Box
Curated by Raul Zamudio & Juan Puntes
 

LA VS. WAR, 2011
 

The Dash Gallery, 2010

2008
mixed media

Party HQ: 
Voting Is Just The Beginning, 2008
Pratt Manhattan Gallery
Curators: Eleanor Heartney and Larry Lit

2008
acrylic and ink on canvas
56" X 36"
 

2009
Gold leaf, acrylic, screen
printing ink on Magnani paper
39.25" x 27.5"
Set of 4 unique prints

Entropic Renovators, 2008
Broadthinking
Art Now Fair, New York

The Vioce That Arms
Itself To Be Heard, 2010
The Dash Gallery
 

2007
metallic screenprint on Magnani paper
32" x 28"
Edition of 10

The Voice That Arms
Itself To Be Heard
The Dash Gallery
March 25th - May 6th, 2010

White Box Bowery Benefit Auction
White Box
May 2008

Paper Politics
Curated by Josh MacPhee

Yo! What Happened To Peace?
Curated by John Carr   

Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today
Edited by Josh MacPhee

2007, placed on “Political Bodies” sculpture by Raphael Zollinger, Pratt Institute (unsanctioned).
black cotton cloth and gold thread, 16" x 16.25", edition of 10
 

2007
screen print and dye on cotton
28" x 18.5"
set of four screen prints on vintage
cotton tea towel

Entropic Renovators
Broadthinking
Art Now Fair, New York
March 2008

Alumni Show 
Pratt Institute
October 2007

2007
One color screen print on William Morris
hand printed wallpaper sample
18.25" X 18", Open Edition
 

Wallpaper Names
1. Fruit Pomegranate
2. Arbutus
3. Bird Anemone
4. Chrysanthemum
5. Larkspur
6. Medway
7. Pink Rose
8. Wild Tulip

The Dash Gallery
March 25th - May 6th, 2010

2007
screenprint on Magnani paper
28" x 24"

portfolio of 4
edition of 5

Bobby Seale
Huey P. Newton
Eldridge Cleaver
Fred Hampton
 

The Dash Gallery
Summer 2010

2007 Benefit Event
White Box
May 2007 

2007
screenprint on Magnani paper
39.25" x 27.5"

Yo! What Happened To Peace?
Curated by John Carr 

(diptych)

2005
two color screenprint on paper
39.25" x 27.5"
edition of 10
 

In The Rainbow!
June 21 - July 29, 2006
Gloria Kennedy Gallery

Paper Politics
2004 - 2005
In These Times Chicago, Illinois
Traveled to Phinney Center Gallery Seattle, Washington & 5+5 Gallery Brooklyn, NY (cataloged) 

2001 - 2008
mixed media
 

In January 2001 as an act of political protest, Kyle Goen created an iconic image of President Bush with the slogan "Elect A Madman You Get Madness" inscribed underneath. The image combines a readable, flat graphic image of President Bush with text to form a parallel to historical propaganda posters as well as to other artists like Barbara Kruger, forming a readable connection between the Bush administration and fascist governmental control. This simple gesture became an artwork of multiple manifestations that spanned and evolved throughout the eight years of Bush's presidency. Becoming not only a singular artwork but rather, one of continuous variation that became increasingly charged as the political climate transformed into one of disapproval. In what began as a free protest sticker, the image soon progressed into a poster, button, patch, a t-shirt, and finally, into installations. While the work was translated into other mediums, it remained consistently within the ethos of spreading free political paraphernalia that the viewer can take away and use, as he will. It was available for free download from an Arts in Action site, and appeared on multiple blogs and websites, often as a slogan without the accompanying image. The fact that the slogan and the image became separable is of note, for the work is not only a visual protest but also one that saturates the public consciousness. 

The fluid existence of the work throughout multiple mediums parallels a fluidity that allows it to exist equally within the context of street protest, the Internet, and the gallery. The poster was exhibited alongside other political protest posters, it has been handed out for free at protest rallies, and it has also appeared paneling entire walls as part of an installation piece at Stay Gold Gallery and subsequently at White Box. These visual connections to different contextual situations forms a symbiotic link between the image as it appeared in the streets and as it appeared in galleries. The work uses different strategies of political protest in different contexts. As the work is encountered in the streets or on the Internet, it acts as a reminder of politics within the everyday. When the work is exhibited in galleries, Goen uses repetition as a means to surround the viewer entirely within a politically charged installation space. His installations at White Box coincided with 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. Using the celebratory media of the convention such as balloons, banners, posters, and confetti, in combination with the work to create a context of political mockery and strife. When viewing the image within its multiple contexts and various mediums, the work accumulates multiple layers of visual capital while simultaneously remaining a singular image used in different ways. In this way, the image becomes more than a slogan, and indeed, contributed to the language used by the media that connected Bush with madness and madmen.  

- Elizabeth Foddé

Installations:

Make Nice, 2004
White Box, New York, New York
 

America vs. America, 2005
Gallery KlinkogBang, Reykjavik, Iceland
 

Elect A Madman, 2004
Stay Gold Gallery, Brooklyn, New York

Stop Empire, 2004
two color screenprint on aluminum
12" X 15"
edition of 5

If We Refuse, 2004
two color screenprint on aluminum
12" X 15"

edition of 5

No Police State, 2004
two color screenprint on aluminum
15" X 12"

edition of 5

Elect A Madman You Get Madness, 2004
Stay Gold Gallery

2003
acrylic & paper on wood
60" x 48"

Death to the Fascist Insect That Preys on the Life of the People
Gallery 800
June 2004

New York Times Review
By Holland Cotter

All's Fair in Art and Politics
By Christina Vassallo

2001
acrylic on canvas
108" x 144" (installation dimension)

"The King of Pop" is a series of 12 canvases each 36" X 36". The series chronicles the transformation of Michael Jackson's face from boyhood pop star to cosmetically transfigured global idol.

2001
monoimpression on paper
28" x 19.75"
Portfolio of 6, Edition of 10

5+5 Gallery
December 13 - January 24, 2001 

Giorgio Armani Private Collection 

Pratt Institute, 1992
mixed media

By A Jury of One's Peers addressed the unjust "Not Guilty" verdict of the four LAPD officers who beat Rodney King on March 3rd, 1991.