You enter the gallery at ArtRage to the installation by Ann J. Lewis with This is Who We Are (#2), 2020, porcelain, ribbon, approx. 10 x 8 feet. It is visually beautiful with the cold, blue winter light reflecting off the broken, bright porcelain baby shoes. When you read the story behind the work, it is terribly sad and leaves me feeling despondent and defeated. How can we as a society allow that 28 children are killed each and every week? I think of my two beloved grandkids that would fit into those booties (or just about) and pray they will be safe and untouched by violence.
Lewis creates works that are lovely yet heartbreaking—disarming to your sensibilities. She creates large installations that require the viewer to slow down and contemplate the complexities of gun violence that raisers a mirror for reflection. What are we doing to make a difference for positive change?
Lewis says, “This is Who We Are (#2) interrogates America’s gun violence epidemic and its effects on our children. Each pair of shattered porcelain baby shoes represents a child who, this week, will be killed by a gun. This precarious installation confronts our preconceived notions of safety, societal responsibility, and complicity regarding gun violence. It offers a contemplative space to delicately consider solutions to this ongoing American tragedy.”
Ann Lewis is a multidisciplinary activist artist using painting, installation, and participatory performance in our public spaces 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 Bachelor’s degree 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 discussed 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.
See more at https://annlew.is/ and @ann.lew.is
