Ann Janette Lewis

Ann Lewis (b 1981 Duluth, MN) is a multidisciplinary activist artist using painting, installation, and participatory performance to explore themes related to American identity, power structures, and justice. Her work interrogates power imbalances such as mass incarceration, police brutality, and the desecration of women’s and trans rights. Ann’s data-driven art uses concept-specific materials to reflect facts in these apocryphal times. After receiving her BFA from the University of Wisconsin she has shown at the Obama White House, and her mural See Her received an Americans for the Arts 2018 Public Art Network (PAN) Year in Review Award. Ann’s art has been acquired by the New York Historical Society Museum and the US Library of Congress. Her work has been reviewed in Hyperallergic, Artnet, Interview Magazine, The LA Times, and The Guardian. She has exhibited in solo and group shows throughout the US and abroad including shows at Petzel Gallery in New York, Seyhoun Gallery in Tehran, Iran, and Truth to Power during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. She lives and works in Detroit, MI.

Residency/Fellowship

Equal Justice 2017/2018

Website

annlew.is

Location

Detroit, MI USA

In Community: Reflect, Respond, Act

This is the time that America makes a choice. 2020 is the year we decide who we want to be. We are in a metamorphosis, but what are we transforming into? From turmoil, grief, death, despair, isolation we can choose joy, community, life, kindness, justice or we can choose inaction. Inaction will continue to drive us on the path set for this nation hundreds of years ago- but as people continue to rise up in community, to dream of new worlds that nurture all of us we have a glimpse of a future foundation built on justice, joy, and equity. That is the horizon I stare down everyday- knowing that if I take my eyes off of it for one moment- it may slip from view. – Ann Lewis

SFAI140 Video Presentation

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