Women of Liberty

Women of Liberty is a site-specific intervention of the mural at N 17th St and Mt Vernon St corner in Philadelphia. The week-long activation at the mural location in November 2019 included a temporary revision of the flag and a series of projections.The mural captures the moment when a group of people hung the Puerto Rican flag on the Statue of Liberty in demand of independence for the island. By projecting faces of women onto the Statue of Liberty’s mural face the intervention explores similarities in the fight against Puerto Rico’s colonialism and the fight for women’s rights.

22 studio is a transdisciplinary design practice co-founded and co-directed by Marién Vélez and Nasheli Ortiz. Our intention is to tackle relevant problems in communities and cities through design processes. We work with architectural, scenic and social lighting design; fashion design, stage design and public art.

This work was part of Power Map: Historic Mural Activations, a series of five commissioned events, performances and workshops activating murals created in Mural Arts Philadelphia’s first 20 years (1984-2003) that depict power and empowerment. Five diverse figurative murals served as the starting point for an exploration of the history of their creation and the neighborhood change that the murals have witnessed. They also offered a prompt for thinking about how power is depicted in public art today and in the recent past. Featured artists include Mark Strandquist & Courtney Bowles with Tripod, Studio 22 (Nasheli Juliana Ortiz, Marién Vélez and Lorna Mulero), Eva Wǒ, Marie Alarcon and Ken McFarlane. This project has been developed on the occasion of MAP’s 35th anniversary by guest curator-in-residence Daniel Tucker.

See Women of Liberty as part of Mural Art Philadelphia’s Power Map: Historic Mural Activations