Agitprop!
The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York 11238
December 15, 2015 – August 7, 2016

Now on view at the Brooklyn Museum, Agitprop! is a group exhibition featuring contemporary artists who attempt and achieve social and political change through their creative practices, complemented and contextualized by historical case studies of creative activism. Agitprop! is cumulative in the sense that the first group of artists included in the exhibition will choose a second group of artists and artworks to be added on February 17, and that second group will choose a third to be added on April 6. The exhibition opens with the work of twenty contemporary artists and materials from five historical case studies. These historical subjects include the cultural campaigns for women’s suffrage and against lynching in America, women as subjects and makers of Soviet propaganda, Tina Modotti’s socialist photography in Mexico, and the government-sponsored Living Newspaper productions of the Federal Theatre Project.

The first group of exhibited artists includes Luis Camnitzer, Chto Delat?, Zhang Dali, Dread Scott, Dyke Action Machine!, Friends of William Blake, Coco Fusco, Futurefarmers, Ganzeer, Gran Fury, Guerrilla Girls, Jenny Holzer, Los Angeles Poverty Department, Yoko Ono, Otabenga Jones & Associates, Martha Rosler, Sahmat Collective, Adejoke Tugbiyele, Cecilia Vicuña and John Dugger, and, in a collaborative work, The Yes Men with Steve Lambert, CODEPINK, May First/People Link, Evil Twin, Improv Everywhere, and Not An Alternative.

Jenny Holzer (American, born 1950), Poster from Inflammatory Essays, (1979–82, 1983). Offset lithograph, 17 x 17 inches. Installation: New York, 1983. © 2015 Jenny Holzer/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

Jenny Holzer (American, born 1950), Poster from Inflammatory Essays, (1979–82, 1983). Offset lithograph, 17 x 17 inches. Installation: New York, 1983. © 2015 Jenny Holzer/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

 

SAHMAT [Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust] (founded 1989), Slogans for Communal Harmony (Auto-rickshaw project), 1992/2013. Rickshaw, steel with vinyl top; documentary photographs and video; rickshaw: 65 1/2 × 50 1/2 × 108 inches, cover: 30 1/2 × 45 × 60 1/2 inches. The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago. (Photo: © 2015 courtesy of The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago.) Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

SAHMAT [Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust] (founded 1989), Slogans for Communal Harmony (Auto-rickshaw project), 1992/2013. Rickshaw, steel with vinyl top; documentary photographs and video; rickshaw: 65 1/2 × 50 1/2 × 108 inches, cover: 30 1/2 × 45 × 60 1/2 inches. The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago. (Photo: © 2015 courtesy of The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago.) Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

Otabenga Jones & Associates (founded 2002), The People’s Plate Mural, 2015. Acrylic on wall, 96 x 36 feet. © Otabenga Jones & Associates. (Photo: Lawndale Art Center.) Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

Otabenga Jones & Associates (founded 2002), The People’s Plate Mural, 2015. Acrylic on wall, 96 x 36 feet. © Otabenga Jones & Associates. (Photo: Lawndale Art Center.) Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

 

Flag, announcing lynching, flown from the window of the NAACP headquarters on 69 Fifth Ave., New York City, 1936. Photograph, 13 7/16 x 10 7/16 inches. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C, LC-DIG-ppmsca-39304. Courtesy of The Crisis Publishing Co., Inc., the publisher of the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for material first published in The Crisis. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

Flag, announcing lynching, flown from the window of the NAACP headquarters on 69 Fifth Ave., New York City, 1936. Photograph, 13 7/16 x 10 7/16 inches. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C, LC-DIG-ppmsca-39304. Courtesy of The Crisis Publishing Co., Inc., the publisher of the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for material first published in The Crisis. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

 

Dread Scott (American, born 1965), On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide (performance still), 2014. Pigment print, 22 x 30 inches. Project produced by More Art. Collection of the artist, Brooklyn. © Dread Scott. (Photo: Mark Von Holden Photography. © Dread Scott.) Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.

Dread Scott (American, born 1965), On the Impossibility of Freedom in a Country Founded on Slavery and Genocide (performance still), 2014. Pigment print, 22 x 30 inches. Project produced by More Art. Collection of the artist, Brooklyn. © Dread Scott. (Photo: Mark Von Holden Photography. © Dread Scott.) Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.