Collective Art and Action
An Art Exhibition on Collective Action for a Feminist Future
This art exhibition by Shadhika featuring 25 works by Shadhika Scholars (Cohort of 2023) explores their hopes and experiences of what collective action means for feminist leadership. Our Scholars are community leaders from across some of the most underserved regions in India and are pursuing higher education while fighting oppressive systems based on gender, religion, caste, and class. These 25 art pieces, created during group workshops at the 2023 Leaders for Change Summits, take you through the incredible power that community work and self reflection have in catalyzing gender justice for these Scholars, their peers, and their families.
Joining these reflections by these 25 Scholars will be Shadhika supporters in the U.S. whose artworks also respond to the theme of collective action for gender justice albeit from an alternate vantage point.
Together, this series of artwork is a moment of collective action in itself, reminding us that injustice for one, is injustice for all and that it is all of our responsibility. Across the spectrum of privileges, opportunities, and experiences, we are bound together; our struggles made lighter in solidarity and our dreams colored brighter by empathy. And as these artworks urge us, we must continue to work together for the tomorrows we imagine for ourselves and the world.
Commemorate Women’s History Month and the International Women’s Day this year by taking this small step of collective action, and exploring this exhibition from March 1 to March 8 2024. On International Women’s Day, March 8, we invite you to join us anytime between 5 pm and 7 pm MST to experience a virtual gallery walk alongside a community of feminist advocates and Shadhika staff.
In the spirit of collective action
Embodying the spirit of collective action shared through this exhibition, Shadhika has partnered with The Feminist Front (The FF) – a youth of color-led organization organizing 15-35 year olds for gender and racial justice in the U.S., to highlight the shared ways in which gender justice activists and youth leaders are working towards a feminist future around the world.
In 2022, The Feminist Front hosted the #ERANow Art Series to center visions of gender and racial justice by BIPOC artists ages 15-35 in the struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment. The FF came together to envision and dream about what a world free from gendered and racialized violence would look like. Nine artists produced and shared their work and art practice as liberation. Artists and speakers included Kassandra Delgado, Urenna Evuleocha, Jenin Yaseen, Zion Greene-Bull, Anne-Fatima Syed, Marion Parajes, David Reyes, Emma Li, and Melanie West.
Each of the artwork created through the #ERANow campaign tells a story of how grassroots, collective efforts are powerful levers of change, and how an intersectional and informed perspective allows us to build bridges of solidarity transcending geography.