Martha Rosler : Housing Is a Human Right

Martha Rosler, The New Foundation Seattle’s inaugural 100K Prize recipient, has been working closely with the Foundation to develop a yearlong project dealing with issues related to housing.  

Entitled Housing Is a Human Right, the project will feature multiple exhibitions at the Foundation as well as related exhibitions organized by Path with Art, Seattle Art Museum, and the University of Washington School of Art + Art History + Design's Jacob Lawrence Gallery. Other program partners include the City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, Creative Justice, Design in Public, Henry Art Gallery, Northwest Film Forum, Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, and the Seattle Public Library. 

Housing Is a Human Right launches on January 28 at the Foundation’s space with the opening of Rosler’s exhibition If You Lived Here Still: Home Front. 

The Foundation's presentation of Housing Is a Human Right takes its title from an animation Rosler created in 1989 for the Spectacolor board in NYC's Times Square as a comment on the rise of homelessness in the US.

This program is presented at a time when Seattle is making national headlines for employment growth and a homelessness crisis that was recently declared a "civil emergency" by the city's Mayor and County Executive. The tech sector’s hiring booms have brought explosive population increases that have highlighted Seattle's glaring class disparities. Efforts on the part of Seattle City Council to raise the minimum wage seem to be forever outpaced by the surging cost of living here. The city is booming with no bust in sight. Is Amazon the new Ford? Could Seattle be the next Detroit?

With Housing Is a Human Right the Foundation is asking the citizens of Seattle if it’s possible to remember the past and commit to a more equitable and inclusive expansion. It is also questioning whether advocacy and radical proposals and visions can become the city’s beacons.

Housing Is a Human Right: programming part one 

If You Lived Here Still
January 28–July 30, 2016
Opening: January 28, 6–8:30pm

If You Lived Here Still is a multi-faceted exhibition that includes the lasting record of Rosler’s groundbreaking 1989 exhibition If You Lived Here... alongside materials the artist has collected during re-presentations of the project.  

Three exhibitions comprised If You Lived Here... Home Front focused on tenant struggles and gentrification; Homeless: The Street and Other Venues dealt with homelessness, both visible and hidden; and City: Visions and Revisions, took up urban planning and development, with real and fanciful solutions. These exhibitions included work by artists, film- and videomakers, homeless people, activists, architects, squatters, poets, writers, community groups, schoolchildren, and others. Four public forums featured the participation of artists, activists, advocates, elected representatives, academics, journalists, and community members. Historical material will be shown with material integrated into the exhibition since 2006.

If You Lived Here Still will be shown in a series of three exhibitions echoing the original presentation of If You Lived Here...
–Home Front on view January 28–March 26, 2016
–Homeless: The Street and Other Venues on view March 31–May 28, 2016
–City: Visions and Revisions on view June 2–July 30, 2016

Martha Rosler works across a range of media often addressing matters of the public sphere and everyday life, especially as they affect women. Rosler has produced works on war and the "national security climate," connecting everyday experiences at home with the conduct of war abroad. Rosler has had numerous solo exhibitions at museums and galleries internationally and has published over 15 books of art and cultural criticism, most recently Culture Class (2012), on artists and gentrification. In 2012 she presented her performance installation Meta-Monumental Garage Sale at MoMA, New York. Her groundbreaking 3-exhibition cycle If You Lived Here... has circulated in various forms over the past 25 years in the US and abroad. It is the basis for programming at The New Foundation Seattle in 2016.