Healing Our Hauntings 30 Years Later

by Hyeyoon Song

This poster is dedicated to SAIGU, 4.29 an event that left many communities, bodies, land and city at unease. I wanted to defy the dominant perspective of this event that left a mark on many lives, and to use the dichotomies between the past and present, visible and invisible, and reality and mythology to evoke many perspectives from those who witnessed and heard.

The imagery of this poster was interpreted as black and white silhouettes who linger in the landscape of Los Angeles. I wanted to use the fundamentals of a stenciling technique in screen printing using positive and negative spaces to bridge the material and conceptual narrative. The figures who remain as white silhouettes, the “cut outs” from the black curtain backdrop are the subjects drawn from images of the L.A. uprising.

It was important to blur the line between the imagery that will be perceived as those who are running away or running towards something. While the figures of the past exist in the shadows of escaping towards prospect and hope, the figures depicted in black silhouettes are many voices of activism triggered by the current unrest and showed up to protest and remember this day.

The typeface of the font used in this poster is Martin and Marsha, both from Vocal Type, designed by an African American designer Tré Seals. The font Martin named after Martin Luther King Jr. was specifically inspired by the posters “I AM A MAN” from the Memphis Sanitation Strike of 1968. Marsha is named after the African American transgender woman, Marsha P. Johnson was prominent for her activism in the Stonewall Uprising of 1969. These two typefaces are nonviolent but bear stories of the American past and introduce minority culture in design.