Printmaking assistant professor Leslie Friedman is using art to inject empathy into discourse about immigration.
Friedman said today’s rhetoric lacks empathy for our neighbors and the experiences of others. It’s difficult for people to relate to others who are distant or who look different than themselves, she said. Many people believe because they haven’t experienced the hardships of immigration that they aren’t real.
Friedman is working to change that by bringing community members’ experiences to the forefront through her installation series “Go Home.” The professor is calling for accounts from immigrants, participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, refugees and others with firsthand experience with the U.S. immigration system.
The original iteration of “Go Home” was inspired by a friend’s struggle to gain asylum status, and later citizenship, in the United Kingdom, Friedman said. The woman was born in the Czech Republic, but she and her father fled the country in response to a threat on his life. She grew up in the United Kingdom but struggled with the country’s immigration system into early adulthood, Friedman said.
The “Go Home” installation featured prints of application documents, letters of support from the friend’s school and rejection letters from the British government. Friedman transformed the documents into wallpaper by printing them in large scale and wheat pasting them on the wall of a dilapidated hotel room.
The show also featured felt and vinyl bras covered in foil using a screen printed adhesive. The bras were hung from a shower rod to evoke the idea of being home but not having a place to put your belongings. It’s a feeling most people experience when staying with friends or family, but Friedman wanted the audience to imagine it as an everyday experience, she said.
The show was part of an exhibition of artist collectives in conjunction with Art Basel in Miami Beach 2015. Friedman later featured the body of work in a solo show in Philadelphia in 2016. In the second iteration, Friedman incorporated a video of a person packing and unpacking to increase the viewer’s feeling of displacement, she said.
The friend is now married to an American citizen, and initially Friedman proposed focusing the prints on her endeavor to secure a work visa prior to their marriage. At first the friend was willing, but reconsidered as concern grew that publicizing her experience would negatively affect her visa application, Friedman said.
That same fear is echoed by many in the international and immigrant communities, Friedman said. Response to Friedman’s call for submissions has been slow and she said the fear permeating public discourse is likely a factor.
Art allows people to express thoughts and feelings in a way that extends beyond written and spoken expression. Sometimes art allows for greater eloquence, subtlety and subversion than what people are willing or able to communicate when discussing an issue, Friedman said.
“There are ways to say things in art that you can’t say out loud,” she said. “It’s important that art speaks.”
Printmaking, as an art of multiples, is an inherently democratic process, she said. Printmaking has been used to produce political posters, pamphlets and artworks and can be a catalyst for seeing contemporary issues from a new perspective.
While Friedman aims to challenge her viewers, she said her intention is never to provoke the audience. Political artwork doesn’t need to be salacious, she said.
“I don’t think you’re actually creating dialogue if you’re making your whole audience upset,” Friedman said. “For me it’s about bringing people in.”

Gallery • 3 Photos

Whitney Williston

Professor Leslie Friedman creates printed works using different techniques and people's stories on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017, in Hatcher Hall.