Tatana Kellner & Ann Kalmbach
Kingston, New York
tatanakellner.com
Whereas, We Declare
2018
silkscreen and digiitally printed
13 x 9 x .5″
Artist Statement
In these contentious times, as we’re devolving into an era of historical amnesia, when the memory of the horrors of the past ultra-nationalistic regimes have been forgotten, and new tendencies to control societies are clouded by misinformation and fear- mongering, it is important to remember and celebrate the Declaration of Human Rights, when the leaders of the world came together to establish moral principles of basic human rights and protection from persecution.
Whereas, We Declare combines the text from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), proposed to the United Nations by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1948, with drawn images and statistical information about immigration. These texts celebrate accepting immigrants to the USA as historically essential to defining the nation, both by enriching the cultural horizons and contributing significantly to science, industry, and the humanities. Themes of imposed boundaries and borders run throughout the book’s imagery; the inside covers are the UDHR preamble annotated by Roosevelt.