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2020 Grant Awards

Witness

  • Farrah Rahaman and Tshay Williams
  • Annenberg School for Communication, School of Arts & Sciences
  • 2020 Black Artists Support Grant
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"Witness" Three portrait photographs pasted on a abandoned building as a tryptic

At 56th and Baltimore Ave, Philadelphia, PA

WITNESS is a joint undertaking of curator Tshay Williams (SAS’17) and producer Farrah Rahaman (Annenberg, PhD) which proposes a public art portrait series bearing witness to the glory and grace of Philadelphians. 

Inspired by the joviality of the annual Odunde Festival, the featured images are uplifting portraits of children, adults, and elders from Philadelphia’s Black communities. They stem from Philadelphia based or rooted photographers including Rashid Zakat, Naomieh Jovin, angel edwards, Lendl Tellington and Ociele Hawkins. Each photo is composed with the motif “Our victory is inevitable. Our glory is undeniable.” 

The project moves beyond the sheer politics of visibility and riffs on Deb Thomas’ notion of witnessing 2.0 as a form of appreciating and bearing witness to life outside of racial capitalism. WITNESS enacts a kind of repair, providing a visual balm and healing in form of small pleasure and encounter for the neighborhoods in which the portraits are placed. 

Follow along @witnessphl on Instagram.

 

  • 2020
  • 2020 Black Artists Support
  • Annenberg School for Communication
  • Making Art Grant
  • Responsive Opportunity
  • School of Arts & Sciences

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The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation

John McInerney (he/him)
Executive Director
215-573-0874
mcinernj@upenn.edu

Chloe Reison (she/her)
Associate Director
215-573-2159
reison@upenn.edu

Tamara Suber (she/her)
Administrative Assistant
215-898-0608
suber@upenn.edu

The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation is located on the Upper Mezzanine of the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

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Philadelphia PA

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