Female Power Project Positive Protest Principles Poster: INSIST, honoring Kamala Harris, who knows her place
Here is my latest poster production honoring Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris is the junior Senator from California. Previously she served as Attorney General of California. Harris was born in Oakland, California. She is the daughter of an Indian mother, a cancer researcher who emigrated in 1960, and a Jamaican-American father who is an economics professor.
On June 7, 2017, two Republican senators (Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Richard Burr of North Carolina) tried to silence Sen. Harris at a Senate Intelligence hearing as she attempted to get a yes or no answer out of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. She wanted to know whether he would grant full independence to the investigator of possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. She was told “to give Rosenstein ‘the courtesy’ to answer or not answer her question as he saw fit.”* Male senators had not been similarly silenced in this hearing. It was as if those two senators were trying to remind her of “her place”—women should be polite and people of color should show deference—at least that is how the Twitter-sphere interpreted the comment. Rosenstein would not answer her yes or no, and he rambled on about why it wasn’t necessary, and maybe a bad idea, for the investigator to have full independence. This could be called “mansplaining.” Sen. Harris gazed (what is the word for looking both amused and appalled?) at Rosenstein as he spoke. When he stopped, she asked, “So, is that a no?”
Yes, women in power should insist.
From Wikipedia; *Christina Cauterucci’s reporting on Slate.com; and the video clip “Kamala Harris Interrupted at Intel Senate Hearing” from CNN. The image of Ms. Harris is based on a screen shot from the CNN clip.
I recently returned from a week’s trip back West. I am from New Mexico, and the landscape of the Southwestern United States is my ur-landscape—the space underlying all my experiences of space. These landscapes bellow out the slow drama of large and mighty processes: uplift; slipping; erosion. In the East, where I live now, the landscape is more about the faster but still inexorable forces exerted by humans on the land. The heavy cover of vegetation around here hides the slow earth energy buried in rocks. In my new works I am using the objects I have worked with for years: plant objects; animal objects; human objects. Now I am making landscapes with them. Landscape is the theater of vast forces and we move across the stage as participants and watchers. The artist is the kind of watcher who gathers and transforms the symbols of vast processes—the props and the costumes—and creates productions that participate with the landscape—allowing it to become self-similar—because the landscape absorbs all of this into itself like a vast, slow, ornamented wheel.
Like most of my work, this new piece will likely be part of a series. Please click on the image and enlarge on a desktop monitor, scroll to the left, so you can see what I am trying to get at here. As a landscape it can be seen as a whole, but it can also be experienced as a series of cropped views. I was inspired by a task suggested to me by a musician who was interested in my Celestial Bodies. He was looking for album art for his heavily layered and textured electronic music and he saw a similarity between our works. Since I am also a graphic designer, I knew I should first see what kind of format album art is in online nowadays. I discovered that it needs to work very small (phone screen) or it could be larger (print or large screen) and also appears in different proportions, square in some places and elsewhere rectangular. It seemed a daunting task to make something that flexible from my work’s highly detailed images. I knew a Celestial Body would not be readable at postage-stamp size! Then I was listening to his music in Spotify and noticed the sound histogram, or whatever it is called, and it looked like a landscape to me, a landscape through time. And that made me think about how we move through a landscape and capture bits of it as we pass through. So I thought I would make a layered and complex space using objects and I could crop different parts for different uses. During April I took a trip with my family and we drove quite a bit in Colorado and Utah. I am still digesting my experience of landscape from that time, in that place, and it is informing these landscapes of objects I am making here, in this time. I hope to get on the road again soon! Meanwhile, visit my Instagram @LedaBlackArtist to see my posts as I process that trip and trips to come.
FIGHT for Hillary Clinton, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project. You can purchase this design online at this link.
FIGHTING IS FEMALE POWER (this preamble is from the 2024 perSISTERS Calendar, looking back to when I made the first version of this print)
You see this is where we started, when we realized from within our secret online groups that the hatred of women in our country is so deep and pervasive and so undermining of our imaginations. We were supporting a mainstream candidate, a neoliberal moderate, a mother, why did we have to be secret?
The next morning I saw a woman walking on the sidewalk weeping, dressed for work. We went to work.
It turned out to be about as bad as I had imagined, but it would have been much worse without the women who worked so hard for these values and norms that Hillary speaks of below. Only a few of these fighters are in this calendar, but inspired by Dahlia Lithwick’s book, Lady Justice, I will be adding more next year.
A friend posted back then: I’m not sure what went wrong, but I do know that messaging is important.
And there it was: message as a verb. I set about making messages and the perSISTERS prints, and other things, were my work.
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Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (born October 26, 1947) was the first female candidate to be nominated for president by a major U.S. political party.
The words are from Clinton’s concession speech given on November 9, 2016. Most of this speech is reproduced here.
Image of Clinton based on a photograph by Lorie Shaull
“This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for, and I’m sorry that we did not win this election for the values we share and the vision we hold for our country.
But I feel pride and gratitude for this wonderful campaign that we built together. This vast, diverse, creative, unruly, energized campaign. You represent the best of America, and being your candidate has been one of the greatest honors of my life.
I know how disappointed you feel, because I feel it too. And so do tens of millions of Americans who invested their hopes and dreams in this effort. This is painful, and it will be for a long time. But I want you to remember this.
Our campaign was never about one person, or even one election. It was about the country we love and building an America that is hopeful, inclusive, and big-hearted. We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought. But I still believe in America, and I always will. And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future. . . . Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power.
We don’t just respect that. We cherish it. It also enshrines the rule of law; the principle we are all equal in rights and dignity; freedom of worship and expression. We respect and cherish these values, too, & we must defend them.
Let me add: Our constitutional democracy demands our participation, not just every four years, but all the time. So let’s do all we can to keep advancing the causes and values we all hold dear. Making our economy work for everyone, not just those at the top, protecting our country and protecting our planet. And breaking down all the barriers that hold any American back from achieving their dreams.
We’ve spent a year and a half bringing together millions of people from every corner of our country to say with one voice that we believe that the American dream is big enough for everyone—for people of all races, and religions, for men and women, for immigrants, for LGBT people, and people with disabilities. For everyone.
So now, our responsibility as citizens is to keep doing our part to build that better, stronger, fairer America we seek. And I know you will. . . .
And to the young people in particular, I hope you will hear this—I have, as Tim said, spent my entire life fighting for what I believe in.
I’ve had successes and I’ve had setbacks. Sometimes, really painful ones. Many of you are at the beginning of your professional, public, and political careers—you will have successes and setbacks too.
This loss hurts, but please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it.
It is, it is worth it. [Cheers and applause]
And so we need—we need you to keep up these fights now and for the rest of your lives. And to all the women, and especially the young women, who put their faith in this campaign and in me: I want you to know that nothing has made me prouder than to be your champion.
Now, I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but some day someone will—and hopefully sooner than we might think right now. [Cheers and applause]
And to all of the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams. [Cheers and applause]
Finally, I am so grateful for our country and for all it has given to me.
I count my blessings every single day that I am an American. And I still believe, as deeply as I ever have, that if we stand together and work together with respect for our differences, strengthen our convictions, and love for this nation, our best days are still ahead of us.
Because, you know, I believe we are stronger together and we will go forward together. And you should never, ever regret fighting for that. You know, scripture tells us, “Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season, we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”
My friends, let us have faith in each other, let us not grow weary and lose heart, for there are more seasons to come and there is more work to do.
I am incredibly honored and grateful to have had this chance to represent all of you in this consequential election.
May God bless you and may God bless the United States of America.”
DESIGN NOTE
This design is inspired by classic prize fight posters. She fought so hard.
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