Freedom of Speech
For Freedoms: Freedom of Speech
(For Freedoms are Hank Willis Thomas and Emily Shur in collaboration with Eric Gottesman and Wyatt Gallery)
1345 Champa Street, Denver, 80204
Co-produced by Black Cube & the Denver Theatre District
July 12, 2019-February 2021
Review by Samantha Hunt-Durán
“The first is freedom of speech…the second is freedom to worship…the third is freedom from want…the third is freedom from fear…That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called ‘new order’ of tyranny which the dictators seek to create” (Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Four Freedoms, delivered January 6, 1941).
Freedom of Speech is a monumental triptych on the southeast side of the Denver Performing Arts Complex that features three images by Hank Willis Thomas and Emily Shur in collaboration with Eric Gottesman and Wyatt Gallery. It is on view until February 2021.
At 1345 Champa Street: For Freedoms, Freedom of Speech, 2018, Hank Willis Thomas and Emily Shur in collaboration with Eric Gottesman and Wyatt Gallery of For Freedoms. Courtesy of Black Cube and the Denver Theatre District. Photo by Third Dune Productions.
These images are adaptations of Norman Rockwell’s 1943 painting by the same name and are part of a larger series of referential photographs that re-conceive Rockwell’s America via his Four Freedoms paintings. In Rockwell’s well-known Freedom of Speech painting, a middle-aged white man stands in the middle of a town hall—with eyes upraised—speaking his truth to a room full of his community members, all white and mostly men. Comparatively, Shur’s and Thomas’ triptych shows three variations of this scene: one of an older native American man, one of a young woman wearing a head covering, and one of a young black man. The crowd is notably diverse.
Although Thomas and Shur have known each other for 25 years, this project is the first time the two have collaborated. Shur is a celebrated photographer. She takes a systematic approach to image-making in both her commercial-based professional work and landscape-based personal work. Shur creates her meticulous images with strict fundamental elements of color, composition, and light. Thomas is a conceptual artist and co-founder of the For Freedoms artist collective. His abstract, conceptual approach to art-making is primed by his roots in museum studies. His work revolves around how history inherently allows for combinations of images and concepts—combinations that can help us reflect on our own contemporary systems of commodity and pop culture.
This collaboration has resulted in masterful images that reference Rockwell’s well-known originals in terms of composition, balance, and color but convey a new intensity and adapted narrative about what contemporary freedom looks like today.
Freedom of Speech, Norman Rockwell. 1943. ©SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN.
Freedom of Worship, Norman Rockwell. 1943. ©SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN.
Freedom from Want, Norman Rockwell. 1943. ©SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN.
Freedom from Fear, Norman Rockwell. 1943. ©SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN.
In the Four Freedoms paintings, Rockwell was inspired by the freedoms described in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union Address (Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear). During this speech, Roosevelt addressed the American people during World War II, asking for “unprecedented” sacrifices—high taxes and exports to the democracies of Europe in their “defense of freedom”—for the sake of a future based on these Four Freedoms. Rockwell’s Four Freedoms paintings even went on tour to raise money for the war effort.
For Freedoms, Freedom of Speech, 2018, Hank Willis Thomas and Emily Shur in collaboration with Eric Gottesman and Wyatt Gallery of For Freedoms. Courtesy of Black Cube and the Denver Theatre District. Photo by Third Dune Productions.
Thomas and Shur’s images force us to re-think to whom these “eternal” American freedoms are granted. Nearly 80 years ago, Franklin D. Roosevelt imagined a world in which these four freedoms are a beacon of light and a foundation of worldwide peace. Yet, today we find ourselves divided: wanting and fearing more than ever. We are in a state of increasing censorship in which the leader of our nation strikes down peaceful protests. Black worshippers are massacred in their churches and our nation’s sacred land is desecrated further each day. We are a nation torn apart by the very forces that we are told are sacrosanct and inalienable.
As the Freedom of Speech photographs posit, it is only by recognizing where our neighbor’s freedoms fall short that we can begin to achieve Roosevelt’s vision—let us hope his vision is not one of a distant millennium after all.
Samantha Hunt-Durán is a Denver native, born and raised. She holds a MA in Art History, a BFA in Pre-Art Conservation from the University of Denver, and currently serves as Vice President of the Commerce City Cultural Council. Her research interests include materiality, alter-modernism, embodiment, and object-oriented ontologies.
