Festifall attendees will have the opportunity to transform an ordinary bicycle into a unique piece of art with the Ackland Art Museum in “Art on the Move” on Sunday.
Allison Portnow, public programs manager at the Ackland and organizer of “Art on the Move,” said participants will be asked to build sculptures on top of bicycles so that the community at Festifall can see their visions of social change in artistic form.
The project is inspired by the Ackland’s fall exhibition, “The Sahmat Collective: Art and Activism in India Since 1989,” and the original “Art on the Move” project that the Sahmat Collective introduced in Delhi, India in 2001, where artists used rickshaws, push carts and bicycles to create sculptures.
The Paperhand Puppet Intervention will be helping out, and The Scrap Exchange in Durham will be supplying some of the materials.
“They invented the idea with some activist artists in India and came up with artworks that were meaningful and inspired social change in their own community, so I had the idea that it would be great if we could do something, but a Chapel Hill version,” Portnow said.
Portnow wants people to learn about the possibilities that art offers for bringing social change in their community from this interactive project.
“Many people probably think that the only way to get change is to speak out through voting or to go to a rally or something like that, but we at the Ackland have been really inspired by the work of the Sahmat Collective in the ways that a painting or a sculpture or a photograph can really make you think about the world around you and what you can do to change it,” she said.
Emily Bowles, spokeswoman for the Ackland, encourages people to bring a theme of social justice — in the same way that the Sahmat Collective did — and use it as their inspiration to make a mobile sculpture.
“In very much the spirit of the Sahmat, it’s art by the people, for the people, to be seen by the people, to be created by the people and issues that relate to people,” Bowles said.
