The exhibit addressed racial profiling and the rise of violence and hate directed at Muslims in the post-9/11 era, according to a release from Chicago’s chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The installation features a wall filled with lines from actual hate crimes against people perceived as Muslim or Arab.
The artist is a Muslim graduate student at the School of the Art Institute. Anida Yoeu Ali said she was shocked to find someone painted caricatures and the words “kill all Arabs” on her work at 33 S. State St.
“I feel that this act of violence is a way to try to silence me, to silence my work, to silence the people of whom I’m speaking for,” Ali said.
The Council on American Islamic Relations calls the vandalism a hate crime.
The art work by graduate student, Anida Yoeu Ali, is just one part of a series of work at the school entitled, “1700% Project.” That series displays responses to hate crimes in the form of artistic expression.
The work, titled “1700 Percent: Otherance,” features racist statements written across a white wall. Ali said the piece seeks to bring attention to hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. As part of the evolving display, Ali and other artists have read aloud the words and also stained them with a mixture of tea, coffee and ink, Ali said.
“Acts like these promote censorship and are an attack on anyone who believes in freedom of expression and freedom of speech,” Civil Rights Director at the Chicago chapter of Council on American-Islamic Relations, Christina Abraham said.
“This is not just an assault on me as an artist, this is an attack on multiple communities to which the work speaks for,” Ali said in a statement from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
The exhibit by Muslim graduate student Anida Yoeu Ali is part of a larger series of work at the school titled “”1700% Project,”” which uses art as a form of response to hate crimes, the statement from the Council on American-Islamic Relations said.
The school said in a statement: “We are saddened by this incident and we are empathetic to Anida’s situation. …Vandalism is never an appropriate response to a work of art.”
Ironically, the piece by Anida Yeou Ali is about hate crimes against Muslims. She took excerpts from FBI files on hate crimes against people perceived to be Arab or Muslim.
ALI: There were three large caricature figures drawn on the wall which the installation occupies, and then there was a word bubble coming out of the caricature around where the text reads “kill all Arabs.”
CAIR-Chicago announced today that vandals defaced an exhibit by Muslim graduate student Anida Yoeu Ali at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). The exhibit, which addressed racial profiling and the rise of violence and hate directed at Muslims in the post-9/11 era, was vandalized with large caricatures and a word bubble highlighting the text “Kill all Arabs.”
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