Listen Until You Hear
5 May – 22 October 2023
For Freedoms x Fotografiska New York
281 Park Avenue South

For Freedoms and Fotografiska New York are proud to present Listen Until You Hear, a six-artist exhibition of intersectional identity explorations including trans survivalism and Indigenous Futurism. Listen Until You Hear is For Freedoms’ first curated art exhibition in New York City,  and its curation—which goes beyond Fotografiska’s primary focus of photography by prominently including sculpture and textile—furthers the museum’s practice of contextualizing film-based work in the overall visual arts landscape.

“Listen Until You Hear invites us to look beyond the surface and practice deeper forms of listening that can lead towards greater awareness and connection to ourselves and the world around us,” said the artist Michelle Woo, who co-founded For Freedoms alongside Eric Gottesman and Hank Willis Thomas. “The exhibition explores themes ranging from freedom, family, love, pain, survival, and the future. Each artist’s distinct visual language and use of representation highlights the connections between meaning and value; historical and cultural storytelling; and our capacity to listen and hear what is at once physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual.“

Accompanying the exhibition’s artworks (which span the museum’s third floor) is a “Banned Book Reading Room,” which furthers the show’s themes while transporting visitors outside of the traditional art-viewing setting and into Fotografiska’s sixth-floor loft space, offering a welcoming array of plush seating beneath the building’s 130-year-old exposed beams. In this cozy reading environment, the public is invited to engage with a rotating selection of books that since 2021 have been banned in American school districts – including some within just 40 miles of the museum. These titles include multiple works by Toni Morrison, as well as Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner; an Amnesty International picture book on human rights; and many books perceived as ‘radical’ or ‘dangerous’ but often simply speak to the everyday experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals and people of color.

More information is in the above-linked press release, and a preview of works on view is below. See the Dropbox folder linked above to download high-resolution image files. Artwork information is in each image’s file title. Image reuse must be with credit to the artist unless an additional gallery credit is noted in the above-link checklist.