Art at a Time Like This announces political poster campaign

A nonprofit arts group plans to plaster political wheatpaste posters across New York during Frieze week, targeting major art fairs with calls to action on immigration, voting and free speech.

Art at a Time Like This has commissioned the posters from Robert Longo, Shaun Leonardo, Sasha Stiles, and Victor Quiñonez—also known as Marka27—whose exhibit critical of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was recently censored by the University of North Texas after school officials feared “barking from Austin.”

The Take One Action campaign will be a public art intervention with a “digital call-to-arms,” ATLT co-founders Barbara Pollack and Anne Verhallen said in a news release. The organizers said it would pair the works from the four artists with “direct, actionable steps to safeguard democratic expression.”

Pollack told Urgent Matter that the main focus of ATLT’s mission is to provide platforms for free expression to artists and curators responding to what she called “current crises.”

“Now more than ever, freedom of expression is visibly under attack daily. Past federal directives on diversity and gender politics have created a chilling effect, leading to a culture of self-censorship that manifests today in the removal of works like Marka27's,” she said.

Quiñonez was “immediately commissioned” to create a poster for the campaign after news of the closure of his solo exhibition at UNT, Pollack added. An image of his artwork was not included in the news release. Pollack said the Quiñonez artwork for the campaign was “still being refined” but that it “does address ICE.”

In collaboration with PosterGiant, wheatpaste posters by Stiles and Longo will go up May 11 on more than 30 sites around The Shed in Hudson Yards, which is hosting Frieze New York; Pier 36, the location of Independent; and the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in the Starrett-Lehigh Building in Chelsea.

Pollack said ATLT often aims to politicize the market environment of art fairs. In 2023, the nonprofit worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council to build monumental installations about climate change at Independent and held panel discussions on “the rise of global repression of artists” with Artists at Risk Connection in 2024.

“This year especially, we want to generate civic participation by the art world, because so many are using art as a way to check out rather than engage with the crises at hand,” she said.

This year’s posters will feature QR codes that link to a specific activist directive from the artist, organizers said, ranging from “immigrant rights advocacy and ICE observer training to voter mobilization and free speech defense.”

“We consider Art Fair Week a soft opening to target and invigorate our friends and partners in the art world,” Pollack said.

The campaign “will deliver its full impact” with posters across the five boroughs of New York City in September and October, ahead of the midterm elections in November. The posters by Quiñonez and Leonardo will be included in those efforts.

And ATLT will launch an open call on May 1, overseen by ATLT’s newly appointed assistant curator, Shameekia Shantel Johnson.

The open call invites artists across the city to submit work for online exhibition at the nonprofit’s website. Two artists from that open call and two additional commissioned artists will also be included in September’s poster campaign efforts.

“ATLT wants all sorts of reproducible images, we are totally open to all forms of expression and creativity. If you look at our website, you will find that a very wide range of artworks can be viewed as political or activist,” Pollack said. “That is the really powerful, and unique ability of art: to embrace multiple points of view in powerful and totally unexpected ways.”

These initiatives will be complemented by workshops and panel discussions intended to promote active involvement in civic engagement.

“Art can be a lonely activity, but now is the time that we must respond as a community,” the organizers said. “Action is the antidote to today’s climate of hopelessness and fear.”

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