Spotlight

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Spotlight 〰️

This Week’s Spotlight

Aram Han Sifuentes

Insta: @aramhansifuentes

Website: aramhansifuentes .com

Aram Han Sifuentes is a Chicago-based Korean American fiber and social-practice artist who uses sewing to empower immigrants across the country. Born in Seoul and brought to the United States at age five, she grew up in California’s Central Valley as the daughter of dry cleaners and garment workers, learning to sew from her mother at six. Her work inherits that cultural history: citizenship-test questions embroidered by hand, curtains carrying multilingual protections against ICE and police, garments that unfold into protest messages, and banners strangers can borrow for marches.

Her U.S. Citizenship Test Samplers project exposes the labor, cost, and arbitrary barriers built into the naturalization process; each sampler is sold for the application fee ($760), with the money going directly to its maker. The Official Unofficial Voting Station invites people legally barred from voting to cast symbolic ballots, while her Protest Banner Lending Library allows those who cannot safely demonstrate to send their words into the streets through someone else’s hands. Though her method is gentle, it is never timid.

Today, Sifuentes is working with Chicago’s HANA Center on Citizenship for All, gathering immigrants, youth, adoptees, and survivors of domestic violence to make traditional Korean nonggi banners. More than fifty workshops have turned personal stories into bright, public declarations of belonging. As immigrant communities face raids, detention, and pressure to hide, her work offers protection, visibility, and the courage of making together.

Spotlight

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Spotlight 〰️

Last Week’s Spotlight

Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.

Insta: @kennedyprints

Website: kennedyprints.com

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. is a Detroit-based American letterpress printer, book artist, and papermaker whose bold, text-driven posters transform printmaking into a form of public protest. Born in Lafayette, Louisiana, Kennedy worked for years as a systems programmer before discovering letterpress printing in his forties and eventually dedicating his life to the craft. His work is instantly recognizable for its layered wood type, vivid colors, rough textures, and direct messages about race, justice, freedom, community, and truth.

Through his studio, Kennedy Prints!, he creates posters meant not for elite galleries, but for ordinary people and public walls. His practice rejects the idea that art should be distant, expensive, or inaccessible; instead, he treats printing as a democratic act, producing powerful statements that can circulate widely and spark conversation. Often drawing on Black history, African proverbs, civil rights language, and everyday wisdom, Kennedy’s posters confront racism and inequality while also celebrating humor, resilience, and collective memory.

At a time when public speech, historical memory, and racial justice remain deeply contested, Kennedy’s work reminds us that art can be both simple and radical: ink on paper, made by hand, carrying a message that refuses to disappear. His prints turn language into action, making visible the struggles and hopes of communities too often ignored. Through repetition, color, and uncompromising words, Kennedy continues to show how art can agitate, educate, and belong to the people.