Project for Empty Space (PES) announced the launch of its cross-country exhibition tour, “Body Freedom For Every(Body).” The tour was curated over the past year by PES co-founders Jasmine Wahi and Rebecca Pauline Jampol with the intention of advocating for the broadening message about the right for safe, legal, and accessible health care that allows individuals to live in their choice and gain back their power. The 27-foot box truck will appear in Times Square on Wednesday, September 4 to kick off traveling in twelve different cities and end in Miami on December 10. Inside the exhibition 100 plus artists’s work will be featured including Caroline Sinders, Alannah Farrell, Barbara Kruger, Grace Graupe Pillard, Pamela Ybañez, and many more.
The Message of Body Freedom For Every(Body)
Ana Mendieta, “Imágen de Yágul,” 1973, color photograph, 20 x 16 inches, courtesy of the artist.
Ryan McGinley, “Qween, American Theater Magazine,” 2023, photograph dimensions variable, courtesy of the artist.
The campaign behind Body Freedom For Every(Body) emerged as a response to the relentless wave of politicism towards queer liberations and restrictions on reproductive-gender-affirming healthcare. Wahi and Jampol created this project as a celebration of the intersecting issues arising towards bodily autonomy and address the importance of choice when it comes to healthcare in individual identity. The Body Freedom For Every(Body) exhibition is a place for individuals across all backgrounds to learn and celebrate the rights individuals should have for their bodies.
The Body Freedom For Every(Body) exhibition will partake across the globe on a semi-truck with the exterior featuring a custom-wrapped design of artist Barbara Kruger’s iconic phrase “Your Body Is A Battleground.” Kruger created the phrase in 1989 for the Women’s March in Washington to advocate against the string of anti-abortion laws that undermined Roe v. Wade. The interior of the truck will act as the exhibition site and throughout each city rotate the artist’s work to be featured each day. The artist’s works throughout Body Freedom For Every(Body) showcase different mediums such as painting, photography, graphics, and more that reflect individual stories of gender-affirming celebrations and struggles.
A Tour Filled with Activations and Education
Lovie Olivia, “Buoyancy,” 2023, courtesy of the artist and Tinney Contemporary.
Rose Jaffe, courtesy of the artist.
The duration of the exhibition tour, Project for Empty Space, has created different activations to engage the audience. One program is “Truck Talks,” a series of informal conversations inside the Body Freedom For Every(Body) exhibit. These talks will include three individuals from an array of backgrounds in healthcare workers, activists, and advocates sharing reflections on body autonomy and the fight/celebration for Reproductive Rights, Queer Liberation, and Trans Joy. In some cities, the “Truck Talks’ will be featured as fireside chats and be live talks to the audience to engage in conversation.
Additionally, Project for Empty Space throughout the tour in their Chinatown space will be open daily and act as the project’s headquarters from twelve to six at night. The space is opened up as a community for individuals to explore activations, utilize resources, and programming. The trunk will showcase more artwork from featured artists like Amaryllis R. Flowers, Chitra Ganesh, David Antonio Cruz, and more.
Laurie Simmons, “Pink and Yellow I (Glamour Picture 2008, 1967),” 2009, chromogenic c-print
36 x 48 inches, courtesy of the artist & Sperone Westwater.
Lastly in the headquarters, former project director Caroline Sinders will organize “A Series of Choices” which is a participatory installation of the featured artists’ works. A Series of Choices allows visitors to vote for statements that relate best to their experiences in safe body healthcare. The votes will be cumulated in a large-scale visualized data allowing audience members to exercise their right to vote and assert how reproductive justice affected their lived experiences.
Terrell Villers, “Transcestors,” 2023, digital artwork, dimensions variable, courtesy of the artist.
What is Project for Empty Space?
Project for Empty Space was founded in 2010 and has developed into a multifaceted arts organization that includes exhibitions, art residencies, Public Art initiatives, subsidized Artist Studios, and Artist Professional Development/Granting opportunities. Their programs lean into a social discourse of narratives that have become historically and systemically erased. They strive to correct historic experiences of forced marginality, in-visibility, and inequity by creating projects that have an impact. Today the organization continues to be unapologetically themselves and maintains a commitment to holding space for both looking back and looking to the future. Project for Empty Space continues efforts to support socially-oriented artists by providing them a platform to share their experiences.
Courtesy of Project for Empty Space.
Courtesy of Project for Empty Space.
