Nuance isn’t usually a byword for propaganda, but the latest public art campaign from non-partisan artist collective For Freedoms is filled with images that mesmerize and bewilder.
The new series, The Highest Form of Wisdom is Kindness, is a response to the surge in antisemitism in the US and whose name derives from the Talmud, features works by a dozen artists – Jewish and non-Jewish – including Deborah Kass, Joel Mesler, Ruvan Wijesooriya, and MacArthur Genius photographer Carrie Mae Weems. The project will launch on digital billboards in eight American cities in early September, in advance of the Jewish high holidays.
Aided by social media’s power to spread misinformation and the far-right’s embrace of hateful tropes, anti-Jewish sentiment continues to make headlines. In August, residents of the Beall’s Hill neighborhood of Macon in Georgia woke up to find antisemitic flyers on their doorsteps, issued by the troublingly named Goyim Defense League (“Goyim” is a disparaging Yiddish word for non-Jew). That same week, Justin Bale was suspended from selling peppers at a Kansas City farmers’ market in response to his Holocaust-denying posts on Facebook. His company’s account on Gab, a social media channel where hate speech runs freely, offers a “gasthejews” discount code. The number of Americans who harbor antisemitic prejudice has doubled since 2019, according to a new study by the Anti-Defamation League.
“We’ve always been bringing art into expected places in unexpected ways or unexpected places in innovative ways,” said Carly Fischer, a curator at For Freedoms, which has mounted a billboard campaign at least every other year since its inception in 2016. When the group started, the goal was to give artists an opportunity to share art in places typically reserved for advertisements or political campaign materials. “The nature of the organization is that we believe artists create into being things that have not yet existed in the world,” said Fischer. “They imagine things and then they make them, and our aspiration is to bring this to politics and civic life.”
Initially inspired by Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms paintings that circulated during the second world war, For Freedoms aims to interrogate our societal values and inhibitions, and bring questions and a spirit of curiosity to the public conversation. “The whole idea is really to expand the discourse around what freedom is, what liberty is. And what it means to be American,” said Eric Gottesman, a visual artist and co-founder of For Freedoms.
For this project, the group handed the artists collaborating on its newest campaign an open-ended remit. “What I love about this organization is they really do not give you parameters,” said Tanya Habjouqa, a Jordan-born photographer who lives with her two children in East Jerusalem. “Antisemitism is not a specialty of mine,” she said. “What I do talk about is really systems of oppression.” Her book, Occupied Pleasures, is a photo series of Palestinians in moments of joy, be it surfing or enjoying a cigarette break. Her forthcoming book features portraits of people in the region up and down the religious and political spectrum.
The work she is creating for For Freedoms is inspired by the mikvah, a Jewish tradition of ritual bathing in order to achieve purity, and often associated with menstruation and childbirth. “It does have a history of oppression towards women, but there’s a movement led by a few female rabbis to have it reappropriated,” said Habjouqa. She worked with Haviva Ner-David, who was one of the first women to be ordained an Orthodox rabbi and who runs inclusive mikvahs, which are open to non-Jews. “She invited me and I just thought to myself: this is a place that challenges a tradition of pain and oppression,” said Habjouqa. “Here is an example of someone who is going against the grain and trying to find hope and healing.” Her piece for the latest For Freedoms series revolves around images of a woman submerged in the water. It is a stunning work, and passers by might not immediately connect it to the series’ overarching theme. “There is so much pain out there, but I am looking for the other path,” Habjouqa said.
“On the one hand, there should be no nuance about antisemitism – antisemitism is bad,” said Gottesman. “Language has been used to bolster other kinds of political agendas. And the lack of nuance in the conversation about antisemitism is exactly the thing that we wanted to address, because we find that the lack of nuance about these very complicated issues leads to a polarization.”
His own piece for the series will be on view in Washington DC, where he lives with his wife and children. His animation will feature the words “Never Again” and “Never Forget”, phrases associated with the Holocaust, and colors pulled from the American, German, Israeli, Palestinian, and LGBTQ+ flags. The piece explores the relationship between antisemitism and nationalism. “I’m trying to think about how nationalism and the identities that we create through nationalism have always kind of failed us in this attempt to build a sustainably peaceful world,” Gottesman said.
“Even if viewers don’t totally understand what a work is about,” Gottesman went on, “that’s probably a sign of success. The last thing you want is for viewers to be like: yeah, yeah, got it.”
