Ann Lewis
Ann Lewis is a multidisciplinary activist artist using painting, installation, and participatory performance to explore themes related to American identity, power structures, and justice. She often creates these works in the public space. In early 2014 the artist garnered national media attention when she installed an oversized police tape banner that read ‘GENTRIFICATION IN PROGRESS’ at the former graffiti mecca 5 Pointz in Queens, New York. Her work was exhibited in the White House in the fall of 2015 during the Obama Administration's reflection on mass incarceration. In early 2017 her work was acquired by the New York Historical Society Museum. Most recently she has been named a 2017-18 Artist in Residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute Residency for Equal Justice. Since receiving her bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from the University of Wisconsin- Madison, her art has been reviewed in Blouin Art Info, Hyperallergic, Brooklyn Street Art, Huffington Post, Le Monde, and The New York Times. She has exhibited in solo and group shows throughout the US and abroad including shows at Petzel Gallery in New York, Seyhoun Gallery in Tehran, Iran, and Truth to Power during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. She has lectured at PACE University as well as CAA, and is a teaching artist with the Young New Yorkers. Through community organizing, participatory performance events, murals, uncommissioned street work, gallery installations, and curatorial projects she continues her dialog of mindful and social evolution.