First Look Media
A limited edition book memorializing a spontaneously crowdsourced art installation in a New York City Subway station.
On November 9, 2016, artist Matthew Chavez, armed with colorful Post-it Notes and a few markers, empowered thousands of people in New York City to exercise their right to free speech and share their hopes, anger and anxieties about the recent US election. The result was a beautiful, temporary art installation comprised of more than 10,000 individual messages stuck to a wall in the Union Square Subway station.
The pages of We Will Not Be Silent alternate between photos of the installation, and nearly blank pages. The blank pages invite others to respond with their own handwritten messages to memorialize their own thoughts on the election, while the photographs printed on the inside of the french-folded and perforated pages require the reader to tear open the pages to reveal the messages—both experiences with the book extending the act of the original artwork’s creation.