Niki Johnson Talk to WVA NORTH Chapter

Описание: WVA North Chapter invited Niki Johnson to give a presentation to us about her work on Tuesday, Feb. 17 via Zoom.
About this talk
Artist Niki Johnson’s talk centers on 'Pillars of Democracy,' a new large-scale series of collaged portraits envisioning Lady Liberty, Justice, Freedom, and Forward progress as four first-time voters. Grounded in Wisconsin's diverse landscapes, at dawn, day, dusk, and night, the figures reflect the directional value of voting in guiding civic progress, and underscore how national values are lived, protected, and renewed at the local level.

Over a ten-month period between the fall of 2024 and the summer of 2025, Johnson and a team of Milwaukee-based artists and volunteers built the large-scale collaged artworks out of discarded stencil paper and leftover spray paint from Shepard Fairey’s 2020 installation of the Voting Rights Are Human Rights mural in downtown Milwaukee. Bertha Boyd’s 1911 suffrage poster Votes for Women informed the format of the portraits. These sources infuse the series with the materials of contemporary protest and suffrage-era design. Pillars of Democracy foregrounds the role of women in the democratic process, the enduring power of the vote, and the way activist art advances movements of change.

For more on Niki Johnson, visit https://www.nikijohnson.com/about

For more on WVA (Wisconsin Visual Artists) visit https://www.wisconsinvisualartists.org