Protest Banner Lending Library at Harold Washington Library Center
“The Protest Banner Lending Library is a space for people to gain skills to learn to make their own banners. It’s a communal sewing space where we support each other’s voices, and a place where people can check out handmade banners to use in protests...The words and these banners have a growing history. They are made by someone, used in a protest, returned to the library, and then taken by someone else to a different protest. The banners carry the histories of the hands that hold them and the places where they have travelled." —Aram Han Sifuentes
Protest banners from the Protest Banner Lending Library can now be checked out for free at the Harold Washington Library Center’s front desk. Use your Chicago library card to check out a protest banner just like you would a library book. Banners that are a part of the library are also on permanent display in HWLC’s YouMedia Center. The display and project were developed as part of the City of Stories 2022 in partnership with artists Aram Han Sifuentes and Moki Tanaco, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, and Chicago Public Library. Sifuentes has hosted Protest Banner Lending Library workshops in communities across the world since 2016. The on-going effort was inspired, in part, by Hull-House Settlement’s own Art Lending Library and was developed during Sifuentes months long exhibition at the museum, Official Unofficial Voting Station: Voting for All Who Legally Can't (September 8, 2016–April 23, 2017).
Meet the Artists
Aram Han Sifuentes
Aram Han Sifuentes
Aram Han Sifuentes (she/her/hers, they/them/theirs) is a fiber and social practice artist, writer, and educator who works to center immigrant and disenfranchised communities. Her work often revolves around skill sharing, specifically sewing techniques, to create multiethnic and intergenerational sewing circles, which become a place for empowerment, subversion, and protest. Han Sifuentes earned her B.A. in Art and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and her M.F.A. in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is an associate professor, adjunct at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Moki tantoco
Moki Tantoco
Moki Tantoco (they/them) is a Chicago-area based arts administrator, educator, and artist. Certified with an Illinois Professional Educator License in K-12 Visual Arts Education and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Moki develops curriculums and programming exploring social justice issues and multiculturalism using interdisciplinary art practices. Moki was awarded for Outstanding Achievement in Arts and Humanity from the State of Illinois Treasurer’s Office during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2021 and was a recipient of a 2021 Make a Wave Grant from 3Arts. Moki currently serves as the Programs Manager for Kids Rank and formerly served as the Education and Programs Manager at the National Veterans Art Museum. Current projects include launching a national arts curriculum for military connected youth with Kids Rank, co-collaborating on research and creation of a veteran arts database, continuing to create educational programming for veterans, military connected youth and families, and research on post-9/11 veteran artists' place in contemporary art history. Moki enjoys wandering, cooking, traveling, and book exchanges.
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