Art Works for Change (AWFC) was established as a 501(c)3 organization in 2008 to expand upon the efforts of a team of dedicated artists and social change leaders that, since 2005, have produced a series of acclaimed traveling museum exhibitions. Harnessing the transformative power of art as a tool to build awareness, incite conversation, and inspire action, we produce exhibitions that address critical social and environmental issues. Through partnerships with our host communities—museums, grassroots organizations, corporations, and advocacy and educational institutions around the world— our exhibitions serve as both crucible and catalyst to galvanize support and action around our most pressing global issues. The nature of our exhibitions —combining powerful art with important messaging— is highly scalable. Because of the quality and power of the artwork, our exhibitions garner attention and critical acclaim, both at the grassroots level and more broadly through local, national, and international media coverage reaching a broad, diverse, and growing audience. So we ask, “How can art help us be heard on the essential issues of our day?” Our content-driven, cross-disciplinary, interactive projects reach beyond the traditional museum-going public, shedding light on issues that in the past are often silenced or confined to private spheres. They empower audiences to participate more fully in issues related to their communities, their environment, and their basic human rights, fostering empathy, compassion, and respect for one another and the world around us. Artists are not only making things; they’re making things happen. They’re not just pointing to social issues; they are working to solve them.
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GLOBAL REACH
Since 2008, we have created, curated, and produced 10 cross-disciplinary traveling exhibitions and projects that have reached a global audience of over 2 million people. These projects, hosted in 17 countries on five continents. have showcased the stories and visions of renowned artists from around the world — including Bill Viola, Marina Abramovic, Wangechi Mutu, Tomas Saraceno, Chuck Close, Laurie Anderson, Sebastiao Salgado, El Anatsui, Jenny Holzer, Mona Hatoum, Hank Willis Thomas, Yoko Ono — along with many lesser-known, emerging artists. AWFC has been invited to participate in a number of high-visibility, high-volume events, amplifying our reach and impact. For example, our 2010 exhibition, The Nature of Cities, was created for the United Nations Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, and was viewed by an estimated 30,000 visitors a day. In 2011, invited by the Singapore group, Freedom to Create, we produced AWARE/OWARE Game for Female Empowerment, an innovative, large-scale public art installation that also served as an interactive forum for the community to explore the issue of female empowerment. The project opened in Cape Town in 2011 and has since traveled within Africa, to the UN climate summit in Durban; the Vukani Zulu Cultural Museum; schools in Senegal; and most recently to the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2013. For the last few years, AWFC has been focused on two art-for-social-change projects: Off the Beaten Path; Violence, Women and Art, addressing the basic human rights of women and girls to safe and secure life; and Nature’s Toolbox: Biodiversity, Art and Invention, focusing on the importance of biodiversity and conservation while calling attention to nature-inspired innovation and invention as a means for sustaining healthy ecosystems. Into its fifth year of travel, Off the Beaten Path continues to draw audiences and media attention. In 2013, the exhibition traveled to The Art Gallery of Calgary, the Foundation Canal in Madrid, and The Johannesburg Art Gallery in South Africa. Nature’s Toolbox opened at Chicago’s Field Museum in 2012 and has been on exhibit in the United States at the Leonardo Museum (Salt Lake City) and the Ulrich Museum (Wichita).
2014-2015
IN
PROJECTS IN
DEVELOPMENT
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Almagul Menlibayeva video installation from the AWFC, Off the Beaten Path: Violence, Women and Art exhibition, Foundation Canal de Isabel II, Madrid, Spain
STEALING INNOCENCE: TRAFFICKING AND EXPLOITATION
Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery, where people profit from the control and exploitation of others. It is a serious crime and a grave violation of human rights. Every year, thousands of men, women, and children fall into the hands of traffickers, in their own countries and abroad. Almost every country in the world is affected by trafficking, whether as a country of origin, transit, or destination for victims. With over 20 million adults and children bought and sold worldwide into commercial sexual servitude, forced labor, and bonded labor, trafficking is considered to be one of the fastest-growing criminal industries in the world. Regardless of the route of entry, most women and children trafficked for sexual exploitation suffer extreme violations of their human rights, including the right to liberty, the right to dignity and security of person, the right not to be held in slavery or involuntary servitude, the right to be free from cruel and inhumane treatment, the right to be free from violence, and the right to health. We may find it hard to believe that sex trafficking and exploitation occur in our own cities, close to home. The political and systemic sources of trafficking are often underestimated or overlooked. The stories that underlie the artworks within this exhibition will help create empathy and understanding for the root causes of trafficking and exploitation. Avoiding tabloid and sensational imagery, we ask the artists to create new and engaging representations, and in doing so, help us feel and understand the essence of the problem of trafficking and exploitation as well as actions within the community to foster change. The exhibition will explore the demand, the victims, the traffickers, domestic servitude, and creative campaigns for change. Global awareness of human trafficking is growing, but the level of knowledge remains very low. This increases the vulnerability of potential victims. This kind of violence happens everywhere, every day, but it is still difficult to see and discuss. The goal of the exhibition is to bring light, visibility, conversation and action to the issue trafficking and exploitation.
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Playing the life-size version of the AWARE/OWARE Game for Female Empowerment, Cape Town, South Africa
AWARE/OWARE Game for Female Empowerment – Electronic Edition
In 2011, AWFC created and produced the AWARE/OWARE Game for Female Empowerment, an innovative large-scale public artwork and interactive forum for the community to explore the issue of female empowerment, share their stories, access information, and stir conversation. As a result of the success of this project in Chicago, and throughout communities in Senegal and South Africa, AWFC will scale the project to reach a broader audience by creating an electronic version playable on mobile devices, computers and tablets. Like the physical game, the digital game is organized into six aspects of female empowerment: reproductive health; entitlement to an education; basic human rights; economic security; legal rights; and environmental stewardship. The digital version serves as a platform to inspire great change in individuals and communities globally. The game, adapted from the 7,000-year-old African board game of Oware may be the earliest precursor of a contemporary trend: to learn valuable lessons through games for social change, or “games for good.� Qualities come forth in gameplay that often exemplify our best selves as we become motivated, optimistic, focused, collaborative, and heroic in the face of success, and thereby cultivate qualities which can affect how we live in the real world. Rather than winning or losing, the players claim capabilities and aspects of female empowerment through story telling and sharing. Through avatars, the players interact with compassion and empathy for the stories of others. The culmination of AWARE/OWARE asks the player to listen to inspiring stories and leads them to share their own compelling story with friends and family by using the social media integrated into the game, and to help spread awareness and foster empowerment.
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Top and middle images: Installation photos from the water series, Future Compass , by Japanese artist, Ichi Ikeda Bottom: Photograph by Polish artist, Gabriela Morawetz, from the Divining Water series
THIRST: WATER, POVERTY and LIFE
How can artists contribute to ensuring that water is accessible to all, today and forever? Water is an inherent human right, yet almost a billion people do not have access to safe drinking water and 2.5 billion live without sanitation. More people in the world have access to cell phones than to potable water. A lack of access to water exacerbates poverty. It is an unforgiving cycle. A 2013 World Economic Forum report named water scarcity as one of the top global risks in the 21st century. Leveraging images and stories, artists will examine the relationship of poverty, water and health globally. Playful and provocative, artists have created compelling water-related artwork warranting attention, such as Serge Belo’s large-scale water mosaic; Lucy and Jorge Orta’s Fluvial Intervention system, which purified the water in the Venice canal and the Huang Pu River in Shanghai; and actor, Matt Damon’s viral video (“Until everybody has access to clean water and sanitation, I will not go to the bathroom”), all which have brought attention to this serious issue. These are among the artists and works we will tap for this project. The exhibition will be organized around themes: Divine Water: Water has long maintained holy status in our world. It is a life-blood, nourishing not just us, but all that lives. It is also a divine offering to whose gods we pray to bring life-giving rains. Too Much/Too Little: Climate change is bringing unprecedented floods at the same time it is creating crippling droughts. Gender and Water: Water is a woman’s issue: the scarcity of clean water and sanitation disproportionately impacts women and girls in the developing world, with females more than twice as likely as men to be responsible for water collection—time that could be spent in school or at work. A Basic Human Right: Every 20 seconds, another child dies from a water-related illness. Water and sanitation issues kill children at a rate equivalent to a jumbo jet crashing every four hours. At every stage of life, people need water that is sufficient, safe, affordable and accessible.
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Belgian architect, Vincent Callebaut’s self-sufficient amphibious city, Lilypad, A Floating Ecopolis for Climate Refugees 2100
SURVIVAL ARCHITECTURE
The exhibition will include the work of visionary architects to create artistically interpretive prototypical solutions for emergency housing amidst a changing climate. In Survival Architecture, science, technology, architecture, and art converge to create a conceptual and physical scaffold on which to question the nature and purpose of survival within the context of climate change and natural disaster: How do we design and retrofit our built world to adapt to increased uncertainty? Through invention, artistic playfulness, and innovation, artists and architects from around the world will explore materials, technology, social activism, and provocation with the highest of artistic integrity to create a pioneering art exhibition. These innovators will present their visions on one of the most essential human acts: survival. Fueled by this visceral interrogation, the artists/architects will thread their constructions around the role that climate change extremes can establish in relation to inhabitation, existence, and endurance. The large-scale installations will reflect the climate change extremes of excess heat; air pollution; drought; water inundation; and earthquake. The goal is to bear a broad societal impact by opening opportunities for discussion from the perspective of art, interdisciplinary collaborations, and the importance on sociocultural relevance of emergency housing in the age of climate change. As with all our exhibitions, the works and accompanying text will make the exhibition and concepts accessible to a broad audience.
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Top: Catherine Chalmers, “We Rule” video, from Nature’sToolbox: Biodiversity, Art and Invention exhibition Bottom: Joyce Hsu, “Naboon” installation, Nature’sToolbox: Biodiversity, Art and Invention exhibition
NATURE’S TOOLBOX: BIODIVERSITY, ART AND INVENTION SMALLER EXHIBITIONS Designed for University Galleries and Spaces of Approximately 2,500 Square Feet
The need for environmental stories has never been greater. Earth is steadily crossing increasingly alarming thresholds of climate change and other environmental challenges. Biologists view human impact as the primary contributor to an emerging mass extinction. People are hungry for positive images of the future. The stories at the heart of “Nature’s Toolbox” offer fresh perspectives, demonstrating that humanity itself is an essential piece of this system, and the salvation not just of nature, but ourselves. Earth is home to as many as 20 million species, but only a tiny fraction are known and scientifically classified. The interdependence among organisms and their environments sustains the conditions needed for survival by all living creatures: clean air and water, crop pollination, pest control, climate regulation, soil nutrients, and a diversity of plants and creatures, among other things. These are “nature’s services” that support us, every hour of every day, for “free.” The importance of biodiversity is often undervalued, as “free” things often are. The reality is that species are disappearing at an alarming rate, claiming individual genes and entire ecosystems—and, along with them, the blueprints for a healthy planet and all who live here. Each loss carries with it a missing piece of life’s intricate puzzle and the benefits it brings to human well-being. The price we pay for these losses is incalculable. “Nature’s Toolbox” brings together works by artists who explore biodiversity’s many facets. Some grapple with the ways our everyday activities are linked to loss of species and biodiversity. Others examine how biodiversity contributes to the quality of our lives, or probe the potential of nature’s amazing blueprints to build a future in which human needs are met in harmony with nature. At its core, “Nature’s Toolbox” is a celebration of biodiversity, creativity, and ingenuity.
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Rohan Chhabra. safari hunter jackets are folded into soft-sculptural portrayals of animals on the brink of extinction
ETHICS AND EXTINCTION SMALLER EXHIBITIONS Designed for University Galleries and Spaces of Approximately 2,500 Square Feet
In 1998, environmental scientists proposed the concept of poaching as an environmental crime, defining any activity as illegal that contravenes the laws and regulations established to protect renewable natural resources, including the illegal harvest of wildlife with the intention of possessing, transporting, consuming, or selling it or using its body parts. They considered poaching to be one of the most serious threats to the survival of plant and animal populations. As many as 20 percent of Africa’s elephants could be killed in the next 10 years if illegal poaching continues at its current rate. The exhibition will explore a vision of the world where animals are respected and protected, and the belief in the intrinsic value of animals along with our responsibility to protect them from suffering and commercial exploitation. The artists will examine the many sides of the story: one where tribesmen revered their animals and in some cases regarded them as almost human with souls, to economic hard times forcing them to kill and sell animals supporting a demand from the luxury market. The artists will offer a scenario how we can shape a world that values and connects all living things.
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Photography by Laura Boushnak, Jordanian women’s soccer team
A COMMON CORE SMALLER EXHIBITIONS Designed for University Galleries and Spaces of Approximately 2,500 Square Feet
In collaboration with Muslim artists based in the United States and abroad, AWFC will create a maze— a life-size interactive labyrinth comprised of ceramic tiles—some containing Islamicinspired designs and some with photographic transfers of images created by the participating artists. The maze will consist of four entrance points, with one common core—a circular space in the center where all the paths will meet. The four entrance points will each represent a journey encountering social, cultural and political misrepresentations regarding contemporary Muslim culture as well as stories that negate these perceptions as reflected through the visual artwork imagery on the tiles to help advance the visitors understanding of Muslim culture and tradition. The project’s aims are multiple. The overall architecture of the project shows that contrary to common belief, Islam is not a monolithic culture but has many approaches. The intent of the labyrinth journey is to create a greater awareness, insights and understanding of various Muslim culture, beliefs, practices and customs, emphasizing similarities with western cultures in many un-expected ways, and helping appreciate and respect our differences. The maze is sufficiently large so that the participants can explore it by walking through each path without necessarily knowing in advance where it leads. Each path also has several dead-ends, so that the visitors will have to go back and try again. The paths will include activities for the visitors to participate, allowing them to advance through the journey. For example, they may have to read a brief text in order to be given a digital password that opens a small gate. The center space is a large, meditative space that can hold various art installations, sculptures and performances. Through our network of artists around the world, AWFC will invite artists who are Muslim (religious and secular), or those with a strong interest in Muslim culture as reflected in past artworks, to participate by sharing images that address stereotypes and misconceptions about the culture.
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GENERAL SPONSORSHIP
Premier Sponsor: $100,000+ • Logo placement on exhibition entrance/title wall at all venues, and on AWFC and partner websites. • 30 free employee admission to exhibition or project and associated programming events. • Benefits listed below.
Presenting Sponsor: $85,000 • Logo placement museum entrance/title wall, and on AWFC website. • Acknowledgment as Presenting Sponsor on all promotional printed and online materials, press releases, exhibition leaflets, catalogues and posters. • Portal to the virtual exhibition on your corporate website. • Invitation to special events with artists. • 20 free employee admission to exhibition and associated programming events. • Private VIP and client exhibition tours. • Continued promotion at all exhibition venue sites on tour.
Lead Sponsor: $50,000 • Acknowledgment as Lead Sponsor in all promotional printed and online materials, press releases and online acknowledgement on AWFC website. • Portal to the virtual exhibition on your corporate website. • Continued promotion at all exhibition venue sites on tour.
Artist Sponsor: $25,000 • Acknowledgment as sponsor on one of the artist wall labels. • Benefits listed below.
Program Sponsor: $15,000 • Online acknowledgment on AWFC website. • Portal to the virtual exhibition on your corporate website. • 6 complimentary tickets.
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info@artworksforchange.org
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