Proposal for a 28th Amendment? Is It Possible To Amend An Unequal System?

September 27 - January 26,2024

From Project Row Houses: "Project Row Houses (PRH) welcomes Proposal for a 28th Amendment? Is It Possible To Amend An Unequal System?, a provocative and interactive art installation by artist collaborators Alex Strada and Tali Keren, to the Community Gallery at Project Row Houses with an opening event free and open to the public on Friday, September 27, 2024 at 5:30PM, and will run until January 26, 2025, a week after Inauguration Day in Washington, D.C. Artists Strada and Keren use this incomplete participatory installation to ask visitors to engage critically with the U.S. Constitution and pose two questions: What 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would you propose? And: Do you think it is possible to amend an unequal system? The artists note that the U.S Constitution, which opens with the phrase ‘We the People,’ was written in 1787 by and for wealthy white male property owners, and that to date, only 27 amendments have been ratified to change the document. Their questions illuminate this legacy and ask for a collective response interrogating the Constitution’s embedded issues of structural racism, settler-colonial violence, heteropatriarchy, reproductive injustice, labor inequities, and non-human animal and climate neglect. Central to the installation are sonic soapbox sculptures that build upon the history of the soapbox as a site of collective struggle, while also emphasizing listening, mutuality, and access. These objects emit an in-progress oral archive of responses to the project’s questions. Community members are invited, during the opening on September 27th and throughout the installation’s run, to step up onto the soapboxes, listen to the archival recordings, and add their responses, which will be collected and added to the project’s oral archive to be shared in future iterations of the work. Proposal for a 28th Amendment? Is it Possible to Amend an Unequal System? will be activated through public workshops Strada and Keren are developing in collaboration with Project Row Houses. Gatherings will bring people together to collectively consider, question, and debate systemic repair, radical change, and abolition to imagine more equitable futures specific to Texas and beyond. The installation was originally commissioned by the Queens Museum in New York City. Site-specific iterations have traveled to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut. With Project Row Houses as a central hub, elements of the project are on view at the Houston Museum of African American Culture and Lawndale Art Center, creating space for civic dialogue across the city during a critical election year. Proposal for a 28th Amendment? Is it Possible to Amend an Unequal System? will be on display in the Community Gallery at Project Row Houses, 2521 Holman Street, through January 26, 2025, Wednesdays through Sundays from noon to 5PM. PRH art installations are always free to visit. Free street parking is available on Holman and Live Oak, with accessible parking spaces on the Live Oak side of the Community Gallery building. ABOUT PROJECT ROW HOUSES (PRH) Project Row Houses (PRH) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people and enriching communities through engagement, art and direct action. PRH was founded in 1993 to be a catalyst for transforming community through the celebration of art and African-American history and culture. Inspired by the work of German avant-garde artist Joseph Beuys and American artist and founder of the Texas Southern University Department of Art Dr. John Biggers, the seven founders – James Bettison, Bert Long, Jr., Jesse Lott, Rick Lowe, Floyd Newsum, Bert Samples, and George Smith – purchased 22 historic shotgun-style row houses on two blocks in a disinvested neighborhood in Houston’s Historic Third Ward and began using the houses as spaces for thematic art interventions. The site, which now features 39 structures over five city blocks, serves as home to numerous community initiatives, art programs, and neighborhood development activities. Since its inception, PRH has demonstrated that collective community artmaking is a sustainable vehicle for community transformation. Today, PRH serves as a model in Houston and throughout the world. Art programs at PRH are funded in part by the Texas Commission for the Arts and the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance. PRH is also supported by a generous community of foundations, corporations, and individuals. For more information, please visit projectrowhouses.org."

Artist talk: September 30, 2024 | 5-5 am

Project Row Houses 2521 Holman
Houston, TX 77004
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