Opening Reception: FOR FREEDOMS Exhibition

Bringing together two exhibitions — one tracing the legacy of Cannupa Hanska Luger’s REFLECT and Eric Gottesman’s NIGHT AND DAY — the opening considers how artists take risks, mobilize collective action, and invites people into participatory experience. Three making stations extend the artists’ inquiries into shared practice. Visitors are invited to create mirror shields in solidarity with water protectors, make clay beads representing the wild bison population in America as part of Census, or respond to banned books, suppressed texts, and contested images through collage, image-making, and other forms of reinterpretation. Together, the exhibitions foreground artistic practice as a form of public courage: confronting censorship, environmental violence, and cultural erasure while building collective possibility. By placing participation at the center of the opening, the evening positions making as a civic act shaped through solidarity, exchange, and collective imagination.