Illuminating Impacts: Showcasing Climate and Abortion Statistics through Art

‍Using carefully selected data about the issues facing communities of color in Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona, the Cultural Engagement Lab empowers artists and activists through creative partnerships and commissions to address, and directly impact, these networks. During a time when misinformation saturates the media, our objective is to illuminate the facts that give us meaning behind our civic engagement and ultimately encourage involvement in the democratic system through voting, mutual aid, and political involvement. While many communities of color are aware of the dangerous impact of climate change, abortion bans, and compounding systemic inequities, the numbers shed light on the statistical consequences that are leading to the loss of Black lives at growing rates. The ability of artists to present the wholeness, beauty, and culture of their communities is empowering in and of itself, and we are grateful to be able to support our network of artists and activists who can speak straight into the hearts and minds of the people. 

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Our Future, Our Choice

In Arizona, statistics show that the vast majority of voters oppose making abortion illegal, and 90% of Arizonans agree that we should have the freedom to choose when, if, and how we start a family, without political interference. Still, we see abortion bans continue to be introduced, and birthing people across the state are threatened with loss of basic rights of their bodily autonomy. This has increased maternal mortality rates specifically for Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. 

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Cultural Engagement Lab commissioned Shoreigh Williams to create a piece that addressed the issue of abortion in her Phoenix community, where she was born and raised. Her painting features bright colors surrounding a pregnant woman with her hand on her belly. In the artistic style of the figure, there’s an implication of the complexity that is inherent in birthing people and draws attention to the layered experience of birth while under oppressive reproductive restraints. Shoreigh is known for this elegantly morphed, dream-like art style that mostly uses micron and acrylic. Her experimentation with the scribble texture has bled its way into a permanent style. 

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‍“Through my work, I want to take the viewer on a ride of following their intuition. My work is self-reflection.” – Shoreigh Williams 

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The Land of Blood and Dirt

On the other side of the country in Georgia, we see rural communities impacted in layered ways by the loss of land, climate change, and health issues that are becoming predominant and affecting generational wealth and land legacies. Due to its geographical location and the fact that it’s home to three of the top one hundred polluting power plants in the country, Georgia is being hit much harder by climate change than other states. Multiple hurricanes have devastated the state in recent years affecting agriculture and staple crops like cotton and pecans. Pecans specifically take up to seven years to produce again, and many of the trees destroyed were over one hundred years old. These environmental disasters are combined with high-rising sea levels, heavy rains, and heat waves that are contributing to sky-rocketing heart-related illnesses and mortality rates for Black rural communities. 

Sheila Pree Bright is an International Photographic Artist and author of #1960Now: Photographs of Civil Rights Activists and Black Lives Matter Protests. She portrays large-scale works that combine a broad range of knowledge of contemporary culture and is known for her series, #1960Now, Suburbia, Plastic Bodies, and Young Americans. Bright is widely recognized and awarded for her documentary photography, and we were delighted to celebrate her series, The Land of Blood and Dirt which addresses the USDA's systematic discrimination that destroyed Black Farmers' livelihood during the reconstruction era after the Civil War to contemporary times. In 1862, the Homestead Act allowed 270 million acres of territory taken from Native Americans to be given to American White citizens. Today, the ancestors of roughly 45 million living American adults continue to reap generation wealth from free Land given to them. Ownership of Land has always symbolized freedom, and it's been an arduous struggle on Black family-owned farms. However, after a century of generational dispossession, Black farmers are fighting to get back to the Land.

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Get involved with our Threads of Change campaign through partnership or artist collaboration by emailing us at info@culturalengagementlab.org.