Damon Davis
Saint Louis Art Museum
September 17, 2021 - March 27, 2022
DAMON DAVIS, American, born 1985
Published by Wildwood Press, Saint Louis, Missouri
"All Hands On Deck #3", 2015
Lithograph; sheet (irregular): 32 x 58 3/16 inches
Saint Louis Art Museum,
The Sidney S. and Sadie Cohen Print Purchase Fund 9:2016.3
© Damon Davis, courtesy Saint Louis Art Museum
Damon Davis’ “All Hands On Deck” is a powerful artwork that addresses social justice and the call for change. The Saint Louis multi-disciplinary artist conceived the original photographs of hands held up high during the months-long protests following the August 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown, Jr. in Ferguson.
The Saint Louis Art Museum displays six of the large-scale photolithographs in a special installation. A seventh work from the series will be on view in the exhibition “Art Along the Rivers: A Bicentennial Celebration,” which opens in October 2021.
Damon Davis and his fellow protesters pasted the images onto boarded-up storefronts along West Florissant Avenue, where they shared space with many other rapidly improvised textual and visual statements. Images of the storefronts were broadcast around the world. In the words of the artist:
“The project in itself was a protest to change the physical space of the street in the aftermath of the murder of Michael Brown. The boarded-up buildings created a narrative of destruction before anything had even happened, and that fed into the media’s biased portrayal of the protesters. It was a way to weaponize art to create a counternarrative centered on the unity and love I saw every time I went out to protest. It sought to raise the morale of the protest community to continue the long fight.”
Damon Davis photographed a diverse array of individuals who were involved in the Ferguson protest movement. Recalling the protesters’ chant “Hands up don’t shoot” that was echoed throughout the protests—they were photographed with their “hands up.” That signal of surrender, however, is transformed in Davis’s photographs into one of resistance, fortitude and community.
Damon Davis’ documentary film about the Ferguson protest movement, “Whose Streets?,” debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017 and received broad critical attention. Among his many other accomplishments, he is 2011 graduate of the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission’s Community Arts Training Institute, and in 2020, he was named a Citizen Artist Fellow at Kennedy Center in Washington.
The installation is curated by Elizabeth Wyckoff, curator of prints, drawings and photographs; and Hannah Klemm, associate curator of modern and contemporary art.
SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM
One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri 63110-1380
