Saturday, July 18, 2026 at 1:00 PM to Saturday, August 22, 2026 at 1:00 PM
Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Los Angeles
Conversation & Walk-through: Saturday, July 18th at 2 pmwith Taraneh Hemami, Preetika Rajgariah, Gabby Severson and Wakana Kimura.* This is a standing only event –please let us know if you need special accommodations.PATRICIA SWEETOW GALLERY is pleased to present Liberté éclairant le monde: Liberty Enlightening the World, Part 2 of Summer 2026, with artists Taraneh Hemami (San Francisco), Wakana Kimura (Los Angeles), Preetika Rajgariah (Houston), Reyah (Los Angeles), Gabby Severson (San Francisco), Lien Truong (Chapel Hill), and Sanjay Vora (Oakland).America’s founding documents offered visions of a united country rising above cries of hate, xenophobia, and racism, a country that would strive for the highest ideals. Liberty Enlightening the World became that symbol of strength, courage, and compassion.Emma Goldman, a political exile from Russia, arrived in America in 1885. In her memoir Liberty Enlightening the World, Goldman wrote, “She held her torch high to light the way to the free country, the asylum for the oppressed of all lands.” Emma Lazarus dedicated a poem, The New Colossus, "… Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”Erected on Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty became a beacon of hope in a turbulent America. As today, the political, racial, and economic divides during the mid-19th to early 20th centuries were profound, serving only the privileged few. The odd specter of Liberty (a towering female figure funded by private wealth) becoming an indomitable revolutionary symbol for those powerless and oppressed was extraordinary. With one outstretched arm offering the light of resistance, the other arm cradling the Declaration of Independence, Liberty unflinchingly proclaims, Freedom for All!The statue offered a stark contrast with America's reality: a country that invaded and enslaved people for their economic value, fought a war to remain a slave-holding economy, turned away asylum seekers to their deaths during WWII, contributed to countless massacres in other nations, interned Japanese-American citizens in locked camps, endorsed McCarthyism, held women as chattel and children as slave labor, and eradicated every Native American nation whose lands we occupy. The atrocities are epic and continuing—yet this is the country that held and continues to hold an embattled beacon of hope for the world.With this preface, Liberty Enlightening the World is not about a single voice declaring who is America or American; it is about the many voices whose sacrifices, hopes, and dreams persist in shaping the future of this country.