Humanity over Hate
Images for study and struggle
Documenting an unprecedented flow of social movement art in the era of new abolition. Every time you arrive at the portals of Abolition Now, you encounter abolition as its images exist now, which is to say past in present, prefiguring the future, on the move.
Abolition Now: Images for Study and Struggle (AN) is a digitally curated, searchable, and open-source database that documents an unprecedented flow of social movement art in the era of “new abolition,” which spans from the birth of the Movement for Black Lives (circa 2012), through the George Floyd uprisings, and into the present. The database contains art concerned with a range of issues, and a multitude of movements, that are directed towards new abolition, and its historic antecedents. AN features short vignette and long form interviews with artists, organizers, and curators about the production and contexts of their work and the image. When possible, AN traces how people reuse and repurpose movement art. Recreated as posters, stickers, postcards, book covers, social media posts, and digital shares sometimes in the millions, art often takes on a life of its own. The participatory platform includes educational commentary, artist study guides, a submission portal, and user guides to empower people to build their own Canopy-IIIF digital exhibit or archive.
With research, classroom, and community organizing uses, AN acts as a counter-archive and provides room to study the visual language and scale of abolition. It allows us to work through its meanings, tensions, and possibilities. AN holds space for the labor of movement artists who are otherwise disappeared from or intentionally misinterpreted by mainstream media, official archives, and politics. It is a space of study where people, whether new to or familiar with abolition, can make connections between movements; witness symbols of beauty, hope, disgust, and rage; and explore visions for alternative paths to justice. The cumulative design of the database generates rich terrain for studying and connecting with the ongoing world presence of new abolition images. Every time you arrive at the portals of Abolition Now, you will encounter abolition as its images exist now, which is to say past in present, prefiguring the future, and on the move.