Photo: André Percey Katombe (SonrisePicture) / TheOsloDesk
LIFT EVERY VOICE
Posters and images from the 5 June 2020 antiracism demonstrations in Norway
In the spring of 2020, anti-racist demonstrations erupted in large parts of the world as a reaction to the killing of George Floyd, an African-American man, by police officers in Minneapolis, MN. What followed were extensive debates and social mobilizations to address racial injustice. A large part of these reactions has focused on making visible the experiences of racialized people. These efforts can be understood as a "politics of experience".
The politics of experience we are seeing today activate strategies and practices that foreground individual and community perspectives about structural inequality. This approach emphasizes that those who experience racial inequality should have more definitional power and representation in public dialogue about issues that relate directly to their experience of marginalization in society.
The exhibition LIFT EVERY VOICE shows posters and social documentation from the demonstration “We Can’t Breathe. Justice for George Floyd,” attended by more than 15.000 protesters on 5 June 2020 in Oslo. The exhibition discusses the protest posters as examples of free speech and narratives of experience. The posters express outrage, vulnerability and solidarity, as well as concerns about racism, belonging and social justice. By exhibiting them, LIFT EVERY VOICE explores how the demonstrations in Oslo, Trondheim and several other Norwegian cities, constitute a new critical event for antiracism in Norway. The posters, photographs and video material highlight the public engagement, while the exhibition performs the preservation of community narratives.
The Oslo Desk, a collective of professionals promoting diversity in journalism, who followed the protests closely, has contributed with photographs and video footage that contextualize the protests and signs. The exhibition will also include works by the group Oi!, a network of young people of color that came together as part of artist Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa’s contribution to the 2019 Bergen Assembly. Oi! was invited by Kunsthall Trondheim in the autumn 2019 to continue their network-building in Trondheim in 2021 and in the time ahead.
LIFT EVERY VOICE runs parallel and relates to the exhibition Into the World that presents the artwork of 1960s and 70s artist and activist Dea Trier Mørch. LIFT EVERY VOICE highlights questions of intersectionality and identity politics that have become prevalent in social movements since the 1960s and 70s and contributes with a discussion of representation in a current multicultural context.
The exhibition is curated by Michelle A. Tisdel (lev-no.org) together with Carl Martin Faurby (Kunsthall Trondheim) in collaboration with Ka Man Mak, founder of the Oslo Desk (oslodesk.com).
The exhibition is supported by Fritt Ord.