The exhibition opens with artwork reflecting on the current landscape and tensions that exist within our culture of free speech. In response to the recent polarized election season, Columbus, Ohio-based artist Shelley Brenner Baird’s piece “First Amendment” cuts and reassembles political signs into a collage of the text of the First Amendment. For her series Banned Book Bandolier, New York-based artist Micki Watanabe Spiller outfits a brigade of “Reading Outlaws” with sashes featuring a hip pocket to hold banned books such as The Color Purple, Animal Farm, and Brave New World.

The next group of artwork demonstrates the long and complicated history of free speech in media, from the days of print to the age of A.I., and evoke technology’s massive impact on society’s incessant exposure to the spread of information. In Machine Series, New York-based new media artist Cassandra Zampini developed a video installation and paintings based on memes and viral conspiracy theories. In her video installation, the artists set a grid of noisy memes that lure the viewer into #flathearth and other fringe conspiracies. Displayed alongside the video installation is a series of paintings, which includes “M3 Gold,” where Zampini uses gold paint overlay to quiet a grid of static memes and symbols from propaganda.

Continuing through the exhibition, viewers are invited into more intimate and personal expressions of free speech, with a reminder that the culture of free speech is one of speaking and listening. Here on display are entries from I Wish to Say by international performance artist Sheryl Oring. The installation is part of her series showcasing personal messages from the public addressed to the future President of the United States, composed by Oring on a typewriter.

Word Powered concludes with a reminder of our responsibility to protect free speech. “Discarded Documents” by intermedia artist Darryl Lauster features three bronze sculptures that simulate crumpled versions of key documents in American history: the 14th Amendment, the Oath of Office, and a Letter of Indenture. Lauster’s work reminds us of our democracy’s past foundations, asks us to consider society’s present values, and encourages the public to face what has been disregarded so they can decide what to uphold or revise. Pennsylvania-based painter Furong Zhang’s “Windows,” inspired by his experience growing up in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution, depicts symbolic objects and human “puppet masters” who control movements and monitor activity through a grid of surveillance screens, which serve as the titular windows. Through Iranian multidisciplinary artist Elyana Shams’s installation “Cheshmee,” visitors are invited to look through a peephole surrounded by black fabric to view films of Iran before the country’s revolution in the late 1970s and consider the impact of this pivotal moment on freedom of speech, dress, and assembly.

Word Powered also features artwork from Buffalo-based multimedia artist Becky Brown, Seattle-based interdisciplinary artist Mary Coss, Dutch installation artist Marcia Haffmans, Philadelphia-based artist and maker Kelly Lawler, interdisciplinary artist and educator Paul Travis Phillips, Philadelphia-based mixed-media sculptor Carol Cole, Argentinian artist Lucia Warck-Meister, and Delaware-based artist Merrill R. Smith Jr. 

Read the full press release.