Voices Her’d
Art Builds Community, Community Creates Social Change - New Voices
PS 224 / MS 443 New Voices, 18th Street and 6th Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn New York. 2007
As one of six projects in our Summer Leadership Institute, young women participating in Voices Her’d Visionaries painted a monumental mural exploring female empowerment, immigrant rights, and gender equality: a call to end discrimination in all forms.
The mural was designed to show how, from night to day, through motion and connection, we can build community through the arts.
The composition moves from right to left and includes large-scale figures of each Voices Her’d participant. Each figure is linked to the next by symbols that honor various human rights movements researched by the young women.
The figures begin in a crouched position, their clothes filled with images of the night sky. The buildings on the back of the first figure depict a dense community that suffers from pollution. Bicycle riders move away from the polluted environment to a greener world. Figures are linked by circles and a scale to symbolize legal justice. A chain also weaves its way through the mural, representing the immigration process.
Learn more at groundswellmural.org
Groundswell Community Mural Project: Voices Her’d
Yamasaki was lead artist for this series for about eight years. Voices Her’d creates a space for young women, in particular young women of color, to be the creators of the visual media about them. The girls in the group, ages 14-20 selected the topic they wanted to address and in many years, spent the year researching the topic and meeting with experts in the field. Then, for seven weeks in the summer, the created a large public mural that communicates their message about that topic.
2004 – I Deal, I Dream, I Do. Park Slope, Brooklyn
2005 – A New Day. Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
2006 – Feels Like Home: An Immigrant Journey. Sunset Park, Brooklyn
2007 – Art Builds Community, Community Creates Social Change. Park Slope, Brooklyn
2008 – Informed, Empowered. Sunset Park, Brooklyn
2009 – Woman Rise. Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
2010 – Truth be Sold. 2836 Fulton Street. Cypress Hills, Brooklyn