An art exhibit aimed at uniting women against bigotry, intolerance and racism is now in Madison but intended to travel throughout Wisconsin, gaining collaborators along the way.
Artists Kelly Parks Snider, J. Leigh Garcia [MFA ’18] and Rachael Griffin [MFA ’16] collaborated to create the traveling art exhibition, “Women Against Hate, United by Love,” on display now through July 7 in the Playhouse Gallery at the Overture Center for the Arts.
The three artists together created portraits of diverse female-identifying activists across Wisconsin. Each woman is depicted with a halo of inspirational phrases that allude to their work or life story.
Because all three artists worked on every piece, Snider says she isn’t sure which of them did what on the portraits. That was intentional.
“This wasn’t going to be about us. The focus was always going to remain on the women,” Snider says.
The idea, she says, was to connect women of multiple marginalized identities working towards similar goals of equity and representation.
“’Women Against Hate, United by Love’ is a collective of women artists who are working in a coordinated effort to dismantle hate rhetoric and oppressive systems that affect all of us,” Snider says. “We are undocumented women. We are women who are refugees. We are sex workers. We are women of various faiths. We are women of no faith. We are women of color. We are white women. You name it.”