I loved collaborating with Kim Lane, Katelin O’Hare, Lindsay Calhoun, and Yoshiko Maruiwa on our 3rd annual Inside Out Project with the 8th graders at The School at Columbia University. More info about our See, Hear, Speak! theme is in this post: https://karenblumberg.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/insideout2014/
Students were asked to write a press release for the project and installation. There words are pasted below and archived on The School’s website here: http://theschool.columbia.edu/node/1584
Exhibition on View Monday, May 5 – Tuesday, June 10
The School at Columbia University, 556 West 110th Street, 5th floor windowsApril 24, 2014 – New York, NY
In the next week, a new addition to Broadway will appear. Students at The School at Columbia University are participating in the Inside Out project and displaying photographs of their faces as a way of combatting injustices they see.The soon-to-graduate eighth graders chose a theme to portray through their portraits. Their theme for this project was to “See, Hear, and Speak.” Their goal was to fight against injustice, and they wanted to do that through photography and art. The project is a showcase of black and white photographs of each and every eighth-grader (and their teachers) posing. Their poses stand for either seeing, hearing, or speaking. To see, hear, and speak really is how they thought to best tackle the injustices in the world. This project is their first of many having to do with injustice and speaking out.
This project is part of the larger Inside Out project, coordinated by the French artist JR, started three years ago after he won the TED Prize for his photography installations. His work started as a signal to raise awareness around riots going on in Paris in 2004, then soon escalated to much more than that. Armed with just a 28-millimeter lens, JR then decided to travel to Israel and Palestine to photograph Palestinians and Israelis of the same profession, then post pictures on the wall separating them from one another. He then went on to photograph women in poor neighborhoods (a project called “Women Are Heroes”) to empower them and to make the neighborhood more beautiful. He has three current projects: “Unframed,” “The Wrinkles of the City,” and “Inside Out,” where he takes ordinary people’s photographs and turns them into works of art and social action.
The installation will be put up this week. The images will be displayed on the windows of The School’s art studio, printed on 2 x 3 foot posters. There will be over 60 portraits directly facing Broadway. Come and look at their portraits on the corner of 110th and Broadway, and get inspired to see, hear, or speak!
And finally… We were highlighted on the Inside Out Project’s Instagram feed!!!
Click to see it here: http://i.instagram.com/p/nymZs7RAd0/
Karen Blumberg 