Art as Resistance Exhibition in Chambers Library until end of February

“Art as Resistance” is a current ongoing art exhibition located in the Chambers Library at the University of Central Oklahoma. The exhibit will be up until the end of February and is free for viewing on the first floor of the library. This exhibit crosses the divide of activism, politics, women’s rights, human rights and minority rights in just eight thoughtfully created posters from two different collections.

“We are normally tucked away and not aware about what’s going on, so we found this exhibit to be fitting with the times we are in,” said Brooke Lefler, curator of “Art as Resistance” and archives specialist.

The first collection is the “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” collection. This collection displays posters created by women and men that celebrate women’s rights as well as promote the protection of gender equality, sexual and reproductive rights and highlights the brutality that women all over the world struggle with. 

One powerful poster displayed in Chambers is titled “Preserve the Right of Choice” by Trudy Cole, 1993. Cole based the poster on protecting women’s reproductive and sexual rights. It also promotes the ideology that a woman’s body is hers and hers alone. This poster depicts the body of a woman with a sign over the pelvic area that reads, “RESTRICTED AREA: It is unlawful to remove any substance from this area without written permission from The Government.” Given the time period, this poster was controversial and moving, even today, the poster holds a deep meaning.

Another poster from the “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” collection is titled “Indigenous Women Defending Land and Life Since the Beginning of Time” by Melanie Cervantes, 2009. Cervantes created a moving poster that shows an Indigenous woman in traditional attire holding a corn plant in one hand and a military grade rifle in the other. Cervantes wanted to convey how Indigenous women were also at the mercy of brutality against women and yet continued to show their strength and ferocity during adversity. 

Cervantes said, “Women struggle on three levels: for their land, against discrimination and acknowledging their rights.”

The second collection of posters that is currently on display belongs to Dr. Don Betz’s collection. Betz is the former 20th president of UCO. He began serving as the president in June 2011 and announced his retirement in 2019. Before Betz was UCO’s president, he was actively involved in the United Nations from 1982-2003 and helped negotiate peace between Palestine and Israel. Betz also played a key role in establishing and expanding vital organizations (NGOs) that focused on promoting peace in the Middle East. His collection consists of posters that represent the fight for rights in Palestine. The posters themselves took six months to collect, but the sentiment that they portray has been around for centuries. They originally hung in the United Nations General Assembly building, but it took a mere three hours before a member of state objected and they were removed. Luckily for this exhibit, Chambers has left the posters on display for over a month.

One poster in the collection titled, “Palestinians do Have Rights,” was created by an unknown author in 1981. The poster shows a mother holding her child with large text in Arabic across the top. This text reads, “The Palestinian people do have rights!” The text is translated into English, French, Russian and Spanish. This shows that the fight for Palestinian rights is not just reserved for the Middle East and, along with that, “Palestinians do Have Rights” was originally published in Japan by its Palestine Liberation Office (PLO).

The next poster on display from Betz’s collection is a cartoon style poster titled “Palestinians Don’t Have Palestine,” by Mona Tamari, 1985. Tamari originally created this poster at 10 years old and it depicts nine different countries, including the United States. Each country has a description below it and reads things such as, “French have France,” and “Kenyans have Kenya,” but at the bottom it reads, “Palestinians don’t have Palestine.” 

Current UCO professor Dr. Andrew Magnusson collaborated on the display of the Betz Collection and gave an opening talk on how the relationship between public art and resistance are intertwined. Magnussin led a course on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and found it important that his students analyze the works of the “Betz Collection” to better understand their research and recognize the importance of free speech during conflict.

“I am grateful that we live in a society that protects speech. Sometimes people want to silence divergent points of view, censor literature or simply ignore human suffering in other parts of the world. Art invites us to do the opposite. It encourages us to talk; to consider new ideas; to reflect deeply on human emotions,” said Magnusson.

“Art as Resistance” shows that art is a backbone of activism and is an important factor of movements all over the globe. Art does not have to be political in nature, it only needs to have significance to one person to make a difference.

The Chambers Library also features art collections on all four floors that include texts, sculptures, artifacts and paintings.