Ann Lewis "The Embodiment of Injustice"

Ann Lewis "The Embodiment of Injustice" 2022-2024

Artwork: Waxed Canvas, Thread, Needle
Dimensions 48"H x 18"W x 1"D in
Unique
Includes Certificate of Authenticity

Ann Lewis is a multidisciplinary activist artist who uses painting, installation, social practice, and participatory performance in public spaces to explore societal-scale harm prevention through feminist pedagogy, community, and myth. Her work speculates on a future bereft of violence through communal creative healing sessions, the embodied contemplation of definitive autonomy, and nonviolent modes of creation. 

Her most recent work, Our Monument, explores preventative means to eliminate sexual trauma through restoration, empathy, community building, and monumental public sculpture. She seeks to create for this project through non-violent means of production and development through the research and use of invasive species and renewable materials.

After receiving her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin, her career began in the street art world of New York City and has evolved into large-scale public works. Her mural See Her received an Americans for the Arts 2018 Public Art Network Award. The New York Historical Society Museum and the US Library of Congress have acquired Ann’s art. It has been discussed in Hyperallergic, Artnet, The LA Times, and The Guardian. She has exhibited in solo and group shows throughout the US and abroad, including shows at Petzel Gallery in New York, Seyhoun Gallery in Tehran, Iran, and the Obama White House. She received her MFA in Digital + Media from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the spring of 2023.

“The Embodiment of Injustice showcases the statistic that only one in forty-two perpetrators of reported sexual violence in the US will be charged with a crime. This number does not include the vast amount of assaults that go unreported. The missing section was removed through repeated folding and creasing actions. Using repetition as a means to soothe, the artist questions who has the right to deem an assault a crime and the patriarchal systems that state justice is delivered when a perpetrator’s life is irrevocably ruined by incarceration. What would a future centered on restorative justice look like for the healing journeys of survivors?” - Ann Lewis

Learn more about the exhibition on our website.