Breaking The Law

American Exile is a series of interviews and photographs documenting the stories of immigrants who have been ordered deported from the United States, as well as their family members – often American citizens – who suffer the consequences of the harsh punishment of exile.

The catalyst for this project was the five months Graham spent in immigration detention in 2010, facing deportation because of a misdemeanor conviction, despite living in the U.S. as a legal permanent resident since 1999.

After winning his case, he and Susan began gathering the stories of more than 20 individuals and their families caught up in deportation proceedings including asylum seekers, green card holders, and immigrants navigating the bureaucracy of adjusting a visa. These images show the wide range of people affected when someone is deported, including spouses and children who remain in the U.S., separated from a parent or partner living in exile.

This project was supported by a 2014 fellowship from the Alicia Patterson Foundation and was first exhibited at Photoville in 2015.

Diana Schmertz
Thank America For the Women’s Educational Equity Act of 1994, 2025
Laser cut watercolor & ink drawings on paper, two papers 11” x 8.5” each

Currently I am researching laws that are threatened by the policy agenda outlined in Project 2025. Each work I create is titled Thank America For… followed by the name of the legislation, functioning as both gratitude and a reminder: gratitude for the protections that exist and a reminder that they are not guaranteed. By using these documents I acknowledge the beauty embedded within the legal framework of this nation while inviting others to reflect on why these rights must be defended. The Women’s Educational Equity Act of 1994, which aimed to strengthen past laws promoting greater gender equity in U.S. education, is laser-cut into ephemeral, lightweight paper with faded imagery, reflecting how rights can change at any moment.

Diana Schmertz
Stop W.O.K.E. Act, 2022
Laser cut ink and watercolor paintings on paper, 9” x 6” each, 26” x 44” framed

As a protest against new American laws that restrict access to education, books, and free speech, I painted banned imagery and laser-cut text from education laws and court cases into the paintings. One such law, the Stop W.O.K.E. Act, criminalizes diversity, equity, and inclusion training and education in schools and workplaces in Florida. It bans the teaching of critical race theory, LGBTQ+ content, and lessons about HIV/AIDS. Each book cover painted for my artwork Stop W.O.K.E. Act represents one of these topics. By painting the book covers, I honor the knowledge and stories they contain. The charred remnants of the cut-out text are piled at the bottom of the work, symbolizing the erasure and destruction caused by the law.

Katrina Majkut

Top: Framed Keep Free Expression in Circulation Sampler and Kit (#2/2 AP), 2026
Collaboration with the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC)
Mixed media, 31.5” x 13”

This kit addresses concerns that the protections provided by the First Amendment are dissolving under the Trump administration. It educates collectors about the core principles of the First Amendment, including what free speech means and whether or not that includes hate speech. It also gets into the weeds of censorship – how to recognize true censorship and how to respond to it appropriately. The goal of the kit is to educate collectors on the value of maintaining free expression and to better understand how the First Amendment is being used (and abused) today.

Mildred Beltre
Revolution Is Not, Revolution Is, 2020
Artist’s own hair, found linen, wool, waxed thread, James and Grace Lee Boggs readings, dimensions variable.

Revolution Is Not, Revolution Is spells out, with the artist’s own hair, four key terms extracted from the writings of activists James and Grace Lee Bogg’s seminal 1974 publication Revolution, Evolution in the Twentieth Century. The phrases, “Revolt”, “Rebellion”, “Insurrection” and “Coup D’etat,” invite the viewer to consider when and through what processes certain acts are considered unlawful and when they are considered patriotic. These words, which have taken on even greater significance following the storming of the United States Capitol by pro-Trump extremists on January 6, 2021, continue to be debated and carry the weight of shifting relationships of power both nationally and internationally.

Chinatown Art Brigade
From De-gentrification to Decarceration, 2015 – Present, 2026
Digital video, 20:00

The Chinatown Art Brigade (CAB), is an intergenerational cultural collective of Asian American artists, media makers and activists whose members have lived, worked and organized in NYC’s Chinatown for several decades. Founded in 2015, Chinatown Art Brigade’s practice sits at the intersection of art, storytelling, and organizing, understanding cultural production not as a standalone solution, but as a critical tool within broader movement-building strategies that challenge unjust laws and systems. While arts and culture alone cannot produce lasting structural change, they play a vital role in shifting public consciousness, mobilizing communities, and creating the conditions for resistance.

This video presents a selection of photographs and video documentation that capture our creative acts of resistance and community-based cultural organizing as intertwined strategies.

CAB’s anti-displacement organizing efforts in Chinatown since 2015 have included partnering with CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities’ Chinatown Tenants Union (CTU) since its founding, using story circles, anti-displacement tenant-led placekeeping walks, know your rights videos, bilingual large-scale projections, community mapping, augmented reality, video storytelling, and other creative actions to highlight anti- displacement fights.

In 2024, we launched the Borough-based Liberation Project (BBLP) project and activated a Chinatown storefront as a living site of cultural resistance and political education through an “Abolitionist Futures” framework. Our project was located around the corner from the new jail site to which there is growing grassroots community resistance and opposition. By connecting local and global fights against displacement, policing, and state violence, BBLP foregrounds the ways in which laws are used to criminalize survival, justify extraction, and maintain housing instability. Our work honors acts of refusal and collective care—whether through protest, mutual aid, or the creation of spaces that nurture alternative visions of justice.

We align with a long lineage of cultural resistance – from the founding contradictions of the Declaration of Independence as an act of defiance against imperial rule, to contemporary struggles that challenge the legality and legitimacy of policing, incarceration, and displacement. We ask: what does it mean to “break the law” when the law itself is founded on colonialism, enslavement and capitalist exploitation? This project proposes culture as both a site of resistance and repair: a way to expose unjust systems while collectively imagining and enacting more just futures.

Meena Hasan
Dissent, 2023
Laser-jet print, acrylic and Flashe on Okawara paper, 12” x 8.5”

In Dissent, artist Meena Hasan submerges and transforms the text featured on Page 71 of the “Opinion of the Court” from the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned the right to abortion. Hasan’s process liberates the word “dissent” from the body of the text, bringing it forth to declare itself four times. Hasan uses techniques inspired by historic textile methodologies such as Batik and Kantha stitching in order to transform papers into skin-like textures and dimensional surfaces that offer performative spaces for contemplation and transformation.

This work is part of artist Ashima Yadava’s ongoing project Huq : I seek no favor which is a response to the “misogynistic malfeasance that is the abortion ban”. It brings together artists and thinkers who believe in collective political action. Each collaborator is assigned four distinct pages from the 213-page legal document, and this series is a response to those pages. In an act of defiance, the project speaks back to the system which “uses our bodies as a tool for our oppression and perpetuates historical inequality.” Huq is an Urdu word for rights. I seek no favor originates from an Audre Lorde poem “a woman speaks.” The bilingual title articulates the multiple identities, cultures and diverse voices this abortion ban affects.

Tom Keough
Untitled, 1982
Inkjet prints on paper from the original artist’s ink drawings, 8.5” x 11″ in black frame

The jailed Martin Luther King, Jr. image was one of Tom Keough’s earliest and most successful ink drawings. The accompanying piece is another of the artist’s ink drawings (used for many years as a kind of “tag”) which Keough combined with his own description of the MLK drawing soon after its widespread acclaim in the 1980s.

Artwork on loan from Rich Garr.

Jeremiah Olayinka Ojo

What Makes a Brotha Shucka, Can Break a Brother Shucka
Mixed Media Installation 4” x 4” x 2”

Deed of Surrender Ledger
Mixed media: repurposed modern-aged Buffalo hide journal and handmade rag paper, 6” x 8”

This object represents the weaponization of contracts and the exact moment of Joseph’s ruin. It is the tangible evidence of the predatory 1834 lease and the legal mechanics used to strip a successful Black entrepreneur of his wealth and land.

Indigo Oyster Jars and Vintage Pails
Mixed media: repurposed 20th Century stoneware jars finished in deep indigo blue, and repurposed paper Chinese takeout rice boxes (32-ounce and 16-ounce), which were originally patented for oysters in 1890
Large jar: 9” tall, 7” diameter
Medium jar: 7” tall, 5.5” diameter Small jar: 5” x 4” diameter

These vessels honor Joseph’s Afro-Caribbean roots through the bruised indigo coloring. The varying sizes represent a thriving, scaling business, while the pails serve as a direct nod to the real history of his “unequaled” fried oysters.

1834 Relic Champagne
Mixed media: repurposed 19th Century antique champagne bottle, heavy twine, historically accurate marbled wax (navy and burgundy), and distressed hand-torn paper label, 12” tall, 3.5” diameter

Representing Joseph’s initial defiance of the era’s economic boundaries, this bottle is his first foray into luxury goods, created to rival the high-end Heidsieck champagne he famously served to his Brooklyn patrons.

1890s Luxury Edition Champagne
Mixed media: repurposed 19th-century antique champagne bottle, custom heavy-duty gold foil capsule, and refined indigo and gold label,12” tall, 3.5” diameter.

This marks the peak of Joseph’s speculative enterprise. It illustrates a timeline where his business was allowed to mature into an established, high-end commercial powerhouse that successfully dominated the market.

Julie Peppito

Good Trouble (John Lewis), 2025
Wood, acrylic paint, graphite, 24” x 48”

We Are The Suns of Liberty, 2025
Cardboard and acrylic mockup for a giant sun prop for the front of the May Day, NYC protest, 2025, 15” x 16”

Liberty NOT Tyranny, 2025
Colored pencil and graphite on paper sketch for 17’ tall prop for the front of No Kings 2, NYC protest, 11.5” x 23.5”

Above the fold and way above the small man, 2025
Framed NY Times print of the first No Kings, NYC protest, 16” x 26.5”

Hands off signs, 2025
Carboard and acrylic signs for the Hands Off NYC protest, 2025, dimensions variable

They Tried To Bury Us, 2026
Colored pencil on brown paper sketch for a “marching meadow” for No Kings 3, NYC protest, 9” x 12,” (with related cardboard and acrylic paint flower sign on opposite wall)

Daniel Bejar

Left: Rec-elections (Let’s make America great again., Wong Kim Ark), 2026

Lenticular print, 24” x 34”
1 AP + Edition of 5

Right: Rec-elections (Let’s make America great again., Isabel González), 2016

Lenticular print, 24” x 34”

1 AP + Edition of 5


This series of lenticular prints from my Rec-elections project appropriates a 1980 Ronald Reagan Presidential campaign poster that featured a black and white portrait of himself and the campaign slogan “Let’s Make America Great Again.” 
In 2016, this slogan was co-opted by Donald Trump with his anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies as the cornerstone for his presidential campaign. Pushing back against this narrative, these lenticular prints replace Reagan’s portrait with portraits of American immigrants who truly make America great. 


The first work in the series centers Isabel González, a Puerto Rican activist who traveled from Puerto Rico to New York City in 1902 by boat. Upon arrival at Ellis Island, she was deemed an “alien immigrant” and detained. González challenged her immigration status against the U.S. in a Supreme Court case known as González v. Williams. In 1904, the court determined that González was not an alien and could not be denied entry to the U.S. Her fight would eventually pave the way for all Puerto Ricans to receive U.S. citizenship in 1917 under the Jones-Shafroth Act.

The newest work in the series centers on Wong Kim Ark, a Chinese American born in San Francisco, CA in 1873 to Chinese immigrants. While attempting to return to the US from a trip to China, U.S. Customs officials detained him in 1895 and denied him re-entry under the Chinese Exclusion Act. Wong Kim Ark would take his case to the Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark and win, establishing birthright citizenship to everyone born in the United States and Puerto Rico.

As viewers change their viewpoint in front of these lenticular prints, a portrait appears from behind the campaign slogan to reveal the American histories that the campaign slogan “Let’s Make America Great Again.” was designed to conceal.

Intelligent Mischief
Collage from the Futures of Repair series, 2025 Spray paint and collage on cork board, 24” x 48”

At the time of the founding of this country, the truth that was self-evident, that all men were created equal, did not apply to Black and Indigenous people. During enslavement, many absconded with their freedom, knowing that the rights so offered were in fact inalienable. They established maroon societies outside of the law of the land which itself violated the laws of humanity. Almost 100 years later, abolition and reconstruction came to transform the law of the land. 100 years after that, this law was upheld. Futures of Repair proposes a speculative maroon society that has thrived alongside American society, waiting patiently for the rest of society to catch up with the truth of love, regeneration, and interdependence.

Along with the collage, the altar inside the fireplace holds tools of repair including herbs and books that the enslaved and their descendants used to repair the ongoing harms they experienced. It serves as an altar to the lineages of repair cultivated within the speculative maroon society.