With the US presidential election on the horizon, a monograph dedicated to artist billboards shown across America in the past few years—some of them bearing political and topical messages—is timely. The organisation behind the billboards, For Freedoms, was founded in 2016 by a group of artists including Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman. A new publication includes 550 artist billboards created between 2016 and 2023, by the likes of the Guerrilla Girls, Lorraine O’Grady, Ai Weiwei and Emily Hanako Momohara.
The book also contains essays by the Whitney Museum of American Art curator Rujeko Hockley and the activist and Pussy Riot member Nadya Tolokonnikova. The For Freedoms representatives Eric Gottesman, Wyatt Gallery and Taylor Brock write that the publication “documents the work of hundreds of artists whose art has towered above back roads and highways, in cities and small towns across this country over the past eight years, in times of great social and political tumult. This community of many different-minded people shares the common belief that creativity can shift immutable systems.”
Emily Hanako Momohara's Family Incarceration: Never Again is Now (2018)
in Nampa, Idaho 50 State Initiative; In Collaboration with 21c Museum Hotels; Designed by Julian Alexander; Photo: Chad Jackson
Hank Willis Thomas's Who Taught You To Love? (2020) in Des Moines, Iowa Awakening; In Collaboration with McCourt Global; Designed by Sam Shmith; Photo: Jeff Scroggins
Lorraine O'Grady's Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are (2018)
in Springfield, Massachusetts 50 State Initiative; Photo: Clifford Pickett and Alyssa Meadows
Guerrilla Girls's Democracy? Only when ALL votes are counted! (2020) in West Virginia 2020 Awakening; In Collaboration with McCourt Global; Photographed by Alyssa Meadows © Guerrilla Girls, Courtesy guerrillagirls.com
Ai Weiwei's Question Mark (2020) in Knoxville, Tennessee 2020 Awakening In Collaboration with McCourt Global; Photographed by Gabe Ford; Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio
Spider Martin and For Freedoms's Make America Great Again (2016) in Pearl, Mississippi superPAC; Designed by Jon Santos; Photographed by Wyatt Gallery
• For Freedoms: Where Do We Go From Here?, Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman and others, Monacelli Press/For Freedoms, 360pp, £44.95 (hb)