A Year of Housing as a Human Right: Can Art Change the Conversation?

The New Foundation of Seattle is working with prizewinning artist Martha Rosler to create a year-long series of city-wide events, exhibits, screenings and discussions about the human right to housing, According to the foundation website:

“The project Housing Is a Human Right takes its title from an animation Martha Rosler created in 1989, at the invitation of the Public Art Fund, for the Spectacolor board in New York City’s Times Square as a comment on the steep rise of homelessness in the United States.

As Rosler has noted, this program is presented at a time when Seattle is making national headlines for strong employment growth but also for a homelessness crisis that was recently declared a “civil emergency” by the city’s mayor and the county executive. The tech sector’s hiring booms have brought explosive population increases. Efforts on the part of Seattle City Council to raise the minimum wage seem to be forever outpaced by the surging cost of living here. The city is booming with no bust in sight, but industries rise and fall, and the future is not predictable. 

With Housing Is a Human Right the artist is asking the citizens of Seattle if it’s possible to commit to a more equitable and inclusive expansion. She is also questioning whether advocacy and radical proposals and visions can become the city’s beacons toward that end.”

More information about this timely and visionary project is available here.