In honor of the unveiling of Stacey Kirby’s billboard, Yo Soy Válida, as part of a partnership between 21c Museum and For Freedoms 50 State Initiative, 21c Museum Hotel Durham is hosting a performance on the sidewalk outside of the hotel.

CIVIL PRESENCE is a performative interaction with the public that invites conversation about identity, citizenship, and human rights while the United States government is actively detaining families and individuals from the Latinx community. Participants are interviewed, measured, and processed to determine their civil presence by officers on duty. Civil presence tags are issued and required to be displayed by participants.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Stacey L. Kirby is a queer artist from the American South based in Durham, North Carolina. For over a decade, Kirby has combined installation and performance to create ‘performative interactions’ in alternative, private, and public spaces. Fueled by the current political climate and ethnographic research, her work addresses issues of identity, citizenship, and civil rights. Kirby believes in freedom through creative embodiment and invites visitors to become active participants in her work to empower the voice within all of us. Kirby is a recipient of the ArtPrize Eight Juried Grand Prize (2016).

ABOUT THE BILLBOARD
“Yo Soy Válida is an attempt to offer empowerment and amplify voices of the Latinx community while the U.S. government’s current immigration policies cultivate fear and discrimination. My recent mentorship with a Latinx teen led to her sharing stories of her family’s lived experience in the United States. Yo Soy Válida honors the humanity and societal contributions of my mentee, her family, and the Latinx community, who deserve to be treated as allies rather than aliens.”  – Stacey Kirby, Artist

ABOUT FOR FREEDOMS
21c Museum Hotels has partnered with For Freedoms to commission 10 artists to design billboards across the country as part of the 50 STATE INITIATIVE project. The 50 State Initiative was launched in 2018 as a non-partisan, nationwide campaign to use art as a means of inspiring broad civic participation. In the lead-up to the midterm elections this November – artists and institutions across the 50 states are designing and commissioning billboards, town halls, lawn signs, and exhibitions, transforming artistic spaces into civic forums for action and discussion of values, place, and patriotism.