Emerging Voices in Print: Political Expression at The Print Center

In the main gallery of The Print Center in Philadelphia, a screenprint by artist Deborah Roberts commands attention. The Measure of a Man (2020) merges ink and collage on Japanese washi paper, its edges visibly worn. Roberts overlays fragmented portraits of young Black men with textual fragments: "Who decides what is undeniable?" The clarity of the ink belies the complex labor underpinning the piece, a negotiation between cultural critique and the legacy of print as a medium for political expression.

The exhibition America Today, running from September 29 to December 16, 2023, features over twenty contemporary artists responding to social upheaval. The show recalibrates the title's historic associations, focusing on urgent contemporary questions. Juror Makeda Best, curator of photography at Harvard Art Museums, selected works examining race, climate, economics, and exclusion through material experimentation. Best describes the medium as "an inherently democratic and iterative form," noting that print’s capacity for replication contrasts with the singular objecthood of painting or sculpture.

A lithograph by Adrian Armstrong, titled Eulogy - For Them (2021), anchors the far wall. Printed on speckled cotton rag paper, its muted tones depict a somber funeral procession, bodies rendered in ghostly outlines. Armstrong draws on archival photographs from the Civil Rights era, intentionally incorporating imperfections in the print's ink layers that invite viewers to question which histories endure unchecked. This work exemplifies how America Today uses materiality to reflect societal tensions—ink bleeding to the edges, paper tearing where it was overworked.

The exhibition distinguishes itself not only through its subjects but also by underscoring the physical processes of printmaking as metaphor. Techniques like etching and screenprinting serve as acts of layering and revision—a parallel to the dynamics of political struggle and cultural memory. In Burn Pattern (2022), a woodblock print by Carolina Caycedo, faint char patterns emerge from layered ink applications, mirroring environmental degradation in her native Colombia. Caycedo's choice of organic papers—crafted from plant fibers native to deforested regions—grounds the work in both material specificity and ecological commentary.

The Print Center, founded in 1915, champions printmaking as a tool for public engagement. Director Elizabeth Spungen states that the institution’s mission aligns with "challenging artists to use print to think critically and communicatively about the world around them." This emphasis on dialogue plays out in the exhibition’s public programming, from panel talks on climate justice to workshops deconstructing visual codes of political propaganda. "Print, in essence, asks to be held, shared, debated," Spungen elaborates during an interview ahead of the show’s opening.

While many works in America Today tackle acute political themes, others gesture toward subtler acts of resistance. Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s letterpress diptych The Many Tongues of Black Grief (2020) employs repetition as a visual motif, layering intertextual fragments until legibility collapses. Her handcrafted paper’s uneven texture mirrors the physical imperfections of printed forms, invoking the erasure and recovery inherent in diasporic histories. In the accompanying catalogue, Rasheed writes that "the print serves as both vessel and refusal—a surface inscribed with what cannot be fully contained."

The show also avoids presenting printmaking as nostalgic or bound to past revolutions. Emerging artists like Yasmine Nasser Diaz and Gabriel Martinez position their work at the intersection of analogue and digital processes. Diaz’s laser-engraved plexiglass works reflect on diasporic Arab identity, blending traditional Islamic geometric patterns with contemporary typography, while Martinez’s RFID-embedded prints examine the surveillance state and erasure of queer communities. Martinez’s piece, titled Trace (2023), invites viewers to scan the print with a smartphone to activate a hidden audio recording—evidence that political resistance in print need not eschew modern technologies.

Yet, for all its vitality, the exhibition stops short of addressing the economic precarity affecting many printmakers today. Print, celebrated for accessibility, remains constrained by rising costs of high-quality paper, non-toxic inks, and presses. A lithograph with hand-applied gold leaf in the show, priced at $1,800, illustrates this tension: its materiality echoes the democratizing ethos of print, while its price limits its audience. Curator Best acknowledges this disparity during the exhibition’s preview, suggesting that "the position of print as both mass media and fine art is its most unresolved paradox."

The exhibition leaves questions for viewers to carry beyond the gallery walls. Who controls print’s narratives in this digital age, where algorithms decide which images circulate? How do traditional forms of printmaking maintain relevance amid ephemeral memes and viral content? America Today does not resolve these questions; instead, it asserts that print remains indispensable because it demands time—time to craft, to view, and to challenge.

A monograph accompanying the exhibition, published in partnership with The Print Center and Temple University Press, provides extended essays contextualizing the works on view. Its editor, art historian Jordana Moore Saggese, notes in her preface that "print functions not as a mirror to society, but as a lens—refocusing our attention on layers intentionally obscured." The book underscores the value of this medium as more than image production—it is a site where acts of resistance can be rehearsed, iterated, and shared.

America Today closes on December 16, but its legacy, much like the ink embedded in these works, will take time to fade. As Spungen asserts, "Print has always been about voices—some loud, some barely audible—layering themselves into the fabric of public life."

For those fortunate enough to walk its galleries, the exhibition reminds us that print, still tactile and precise, retains a vital urgency in the act of speaking truth to power.