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This Artist Is Collecting Letters To Future Women

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Photo Courtesy of Joe Gibson

Artist Georgia Saxelby has been collecting hundreds of handwritten letters to future women as a way to mark the one-year anniversary of the 2017 Women’s March. “My whole practice is about understanding the value and power of marking and ritualizing the things most important to us,” she says. “ I felt we needed to mark the Women’s March because women’s histories are often forgotten.”

The interactive art installation first opened at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 21, 2018—the one-year anniversary of the march—and it has been traveling to different cultural institutions in Washington, D.C., since then. The project invites women, men and all gender identities to write a letter that will be archived until 2037 and then re-exhibited on the 20th anniversary of the Women’s March.  The letters will give historical context to one of the largest protests, says Saxelby, a New York City-based and Australian-born artist, who visited Washington, D.C., for the first time on the day of the Women’s March.

“A big part of the project was infiltrating large institutions,” Saxelby says. The letters will be digitized for preservation and the originals will be held in the archives of the Smithsonian and the Phillips Collection until they are re-exhibited in 2037. Saxelby specifically choose letters as the form of expression because, she says, “they allow us to unravel our thoughts unlike social media.”

Photo courtesy of Lisa Rabasca Roepe

The installation is currently at the Hirshhorn Museum until June 10, where participants can display their letters on a window overlooking the National Archives and Pennsylvania Avenue—the main route used for the Women’s March. “We’re writing our own archives,” Saxelby says.

Participants are invited to consider the following when composing their letter:

  • In the last year since the Women’s March, what have you learned, felt or witnessed that you hadn’t before?
  • Describe an instance where you’ve become aware of the challenges or realities facing women.
  • Describe in detail one way you hope things will be different for women reading your letter in 2037. How will it look and feel from her perspective.

Letters range from missives about equality, empowerment and breaking the silence to short notes of encouragement such as, “You can and you WILL #Persist.” There are even drawings by children tacked on the window.

Among Saxelby’s favorite letters is a seven-page anonymous missive about a woman’s experience being the first female member of her law class. Another is a letter from an 82-year-old man who writes about all the wars he has seen in his lifetime, and ends with “the world needs the wisdom of women.”

Everyone is invited to add their voice to the archive by writing a letter and mailing it by June 30, 2018 to: To Future Women, Georgia Saxelby, c/o The Phillips Collection, 1600 21st Street, NW, Washington, DC 20009.