Eco-Social Realism: Historic Mural Activations
Eco-Social Realism: Historic Mural Activations takes as its starting point four murals within the larger neighborhood around TILT that were produced in the early years of Mural Arts Philadelphia. Those murals include: Forest Green (1996) by Ras Malik, Cinema Verde (1998) by Dennis Haugh, Tropical Landscape (1999) by Diane Keller and Tropical Landscape with Waterfall (2000) by Ana Uribe. As with many murals of that time period, these four engaged in the representation of pastoral and garden scenes, often mixing fantasy with landscapes familiar to both nearby Pennsylvania and the Caribbean, where many neighbors originally migrated from. With support from Mural Arts Philadelphia and building on a previous project utilizing “historic mural activations”, four Philadelphia artists have been invited to use these murals as a prompt to create activations throughout the summer of 2026 that include active engagement with the site and neighboring areas to explore the meaning of the original work and its relevance for the present. The resulting artwork from those activations will be exhibited at TILT from September–November 2026.
This exhibit is part of a series called Eco-Social Realism, which is a regional exhibition series that grows out of the ongoing Eco-Social Series, co-sponsored by RAIR, Green Sun, and Making Worlds books since 2023. The exhibitions are taking place in multiple sites throughout the region in late 2026, including Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford College, Rowan University Museum of Contemporary Art, Street Road Artist Space, TILT Institute, Big Ramp, and RAIR. This exhibition series brings together artworks that show an increased interest in infrastructural and bioregional practices that can visualize and embody the territorial scale of both problems and solutions related to the climate crisis.
About the Artists:
Grimaldi Baez is an interdisciplinary artist working across sound, installation, and participatory practice. He builds experimental tools, including drawing machines and sound systems, to explore the relationship between perception, material, and collective experience.
José Ortiz-Pagán, a Puerto Rican artist based in Philadelphia, uses art as a tool for social change, recontextualizing spirituality as a form of resistance. His work empowers communities through collective rituals and storytelling. Notable projects include *A Solitary Procession*, a space for mourning with dignity, and *Summoning of Memory*, a performance in Kensington exploring self-agency through shared memory. In 2025, he completed *From Soil to Stars*, an artist residency at the University of Pennsylvania. His work has been exhibited internationally and received recognition from NALAC and the Philadelphia Foundation. In 2026 he was awarded a Pew Fellowship.
Li Sumpter, Ph.D. is a multidisciplinary artist and independent scholar who applies strategies of worldbuilding and mythic design toward building better, more resilient communities of the future. Li’s creative research and collaborative design initiatives engage the art of survival and sustainability through diverse ecologies and immersive stories of change. Li is a cultural producer and eco-arts activist working through MythMedia Studios, the Escape Artist Initiative, and various arts and community-based organizations in Philly and across the country. She holds an MA in Art and Humanities Education from NYU and a MA/Ph.D. in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Li has been a visiting professor at Haverford College and Moore College of Art and Design, and has taught special topics for youth and adult courses at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Barnes Foundation, and Fleisher Art Memorial. She has completed various Philadelphia-based residences for arts and technology, arts and ecology, and the literary arts.
Lori Waselchuk is a documentary photographer whose work is a simultaneous inquiry into the lived experiences of human beings and the systems we inhabit, contest, and construct. Her work is published and exhibited internationally. She is a documentary photographer whose works have appeared in national and international exhibitions and publications. Waselchuk also curates and coordinates projects that prioritize creative engagement and social change, including the Women’s Mobile Museum, co-created with South African Photographer Zanele Muholi, and Grace Before Dying, a collaboration with incarcerated hospice caregivers at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Waselchuk is a recipient of numerous honors for her work, including an Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photography Fellowship, a Pew Fellowship for the Arts, and a Leeway Foundation Transformation Award.
Ricky Yanas is a Texas-born artist, educator, and curator living in Philadelphia. Working within a pragmatic tradition of problem finding, his work extends through a variety of disciplines (photography, documentary film, installation and archival investigation) with the aim to create inter-sectional/inter-historical spaces of inquiry, mutual engagement, and collaboration through collective art-making and ideological exploration. In 2016, Yanas co-founded Ulises Books. His projects include “Extension or Communication: Puerto Rico” at Tiger Strikes Asteroid Gallery Philadelphia and Taller Puertorriqueno, and “The Green Sun”, a collaboration with artist Kristen Neville-Taylor that brings together practitioners from environmental and creative sectors to re-envision the role of energy in our lives—past, present and future. Most recently, he co-curated “An Exchange of Shifting Atmospheres” with Leslie Moody Castro at Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philly.
Project Team & Partners
Curated by Daniel Tucker for Mural Arts Philadelphia and TILT Institute
Featuring new artwork by: José Ortiz-Pagán, Li Sumpter, Lori Waselchuk, and Ricky Yanas & Grimaldi Baez
Project Management by Pete Angevine
September 10, 2026–November 21, 2026
