SEQB20 Artists: Julian Louis Phillips

Lessons No. 1 is a collaborative performance and sculpture that uses politically charged slogans to investigate the power dynamic between artist and viewer. In my practice, I question the ways art, propaganda, and culture intersect, and the systems that disguise one from the other. Lessons No. 1 is an invitation to the audience to obey or detract from my chosen language, aesthetic, and actions in a pseudo-classroom environment. The audience’s work from Lessons No. 1 will populate Slogan at the other location of the Southeast Queens Biennial, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (JCAL). Slogan is the installation of all of the drawings from Lessons No. 1. During the course of the exhibition audience drawings will replace my own in Slogan reversing the power dynamic exhibited in Lessons No. 1.

I wanted to investigate my own feelings towards political advertising and fill an absence of messaging I wish I was seeing. By utilizing the graphic layout of political candidate placards and the hastiness of protest signs, I want to question where this language intersects and departs from one another.