VOTE for Reproductive Freedom, 2022 billboard, by Lena Wolff & Hope Meng
Project History
Berkeley Stands United Against Hate, offset posters, 2017
Beginning in 2017, I initiated a set of series of text-based works aimed at bolstering civic engagement and promoting democracy in the face of rising right-wing extremism in the United States after the 2016 election. Working closely with graphic designers to produce the project, four different series of posters have been released to date, starting with a widespread anti-hate campaign in the Bay Area in 2017 made in collaboration with Lexi Visco (of Companion Platform), followed by an initiative to boost voter participation for the 2018 midterms that was relaunched in 2020 and 2022. In 2022, the VOTE posters, billboards and other visuals were designed with a new collaborator, Bay Area letterform artist and graphic designer Hope Meng.
The VOTE series encourages people to vote for meaningful reasons related to the critical issues of our day — for reproductive freedom, gun control, LGBTQ rights, racial justice and the health of the planet at large, rather than a single candidate. Through this approach the project adds to existing community-led voter engagement efforts and is welcomed in spaces like restaurants, libraries, bookstores, and cafes. During the lead up to the 2020 general election, images from the VOTE campaign spread across the country in the form of free posters, billboards, downloadable files and digital images that were shared publicly in storefront windows and on social media. To date over 90,000 posters from the VOTE series have been distributed for free in over 100 cities in 28 states, with a strategic emphasis in swing states. In 2022, the VOTE for Reproductive Freedom billboard was installed in 8 states ahead of the midterm elections.
Since their release, the United Against Hate posters and VOTE posters have been collected by SFMOMA, the Oakland Museum of California and the San Francisco History Collection of the SF Public Library. On November 12th, 2019, Mayor Jesse Arreguin named “Lena Wolff and Miriam Klein Stahl Day” in the city of Berkeley, in part for this project that uses art to promote civic engagement. The city of Berkeley also launched an annually celebrated “United Against Hate Week” based on the phrase of the first poster made in 2017.
