Martha Rosler’s art is right up our alley. She addresses Seattle’s housing issues head-on with all the beauty and complexity of a distinguished artist. Martha’s art is challenging and throught-provoking.
She’s created a year-long series of exhibitions, screenings, workshops, and community discussions that advance our city’s conversation about housing and homelessness.
Some of her upcoming exhibits caught my eye, and I thought I’d share:
The New Foundation Seattle
If You Lived Here Still
January 28 – July 30, 2016
If You Lived Here Still includes photographs, videos, documents, and slideshows drawn from Martha Roseler’s 1989 presentation at the Dia Art Foundation in New York City. You’ll find work by artists, film- and videomakers, homeless people, activists, architects, squatters, poets, writers, community groups, schoolchildren, and others. Three exhibitions comprise If You Lived Here Still:
- Home Front (January 28 – March 26, 2016), which focuses on tenant struggles and gentrification;
- Homeless: The Street and Other Venues (March 31 – May 28, 2016), which deals with homelessness, both visible and hidden; and
- City: Visions and Revisions (June 2 – July 30, 2016), which takes up urban planning and development with real and fanciful solutions.
Seattle Art Museum (Third Floor Galleries)
Martha Rosler: Below the Surface
Dec 19, 2015 – July 4, 2016
This exhibit includes several videos and two photomontage series. In the first series, Rosler shows the disconnect between the televised carnage of the Vietnam War and the prosperity dreams of an upwardly mobile, predominantly white middle class.
Decades later, the American invasion of Iraq prompted a new body of work, which takes into account a changed technological and media landscape—the 24-hour news cycle facilitated by the rise of the internet and social media. This series reflects the ever-greater gap between a hedonistic culture of consumption and spectacularized images of war in high definition.
Rosler will also give an artist lecture at SAM on Wednesday, May 11, at 7 p.m.
Seattle Public Library
Community Talk
May 18, 7-9 p.m.
Individuals who have been affected by Seattle’s housing crisis will tell their stories. Guest TBA.
I’m excited about these. It’s inspiring to see an artist wading into the very real (and timely) issues of housing and homelessness—especially because those issues feel personal.
I share Martha’s belief that housing is a human right. I do everything I can to put people in homes they love. I love working with first-time buyers who have never owned a home before—teaching them about the housing market, educating them on sound housing investments, and working within their unique circumstances and financial constraints to put them into long-term housing.
But housing goes beyond those who can afford to buy a house. Housing is a place to call “home,” a place to feel safe and secure, and that—everyone deserves that. It doesn’t matter who you are. You deserve a home.
That’s why I support Mary’s Place, and that’s why I founded Agents of Change, a philanthropic group of real estate professionals working to bridge the gap between homelessness and home-ownership. As Seattle continues to develop and housing prices continue to climb, we’re facing a serious homelessness issue, and I firmly believe that it is our responsibility to address it—you, me, Martha Rosler, and the rest of Seattle.
