How Gabriel Sosa Continues to Spark Hope
In anticipation of the application of Accelerator Cohort Four closing June 20, we caught up with past Accelerator artist, Gabriel Sosa, to hear how it’s been going since the launch of his billboard series last year. His project was instrumental in sparking hope and creating connections in those neighborhoods most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We loved hearing how his work has continued to do that in new ways in the months since he launched No es fácil/It ain’t easy.
This past year, as part of the Now + There Accelerator Program, I created No es fácil/It ain’t easy, a bilingual series of nine billboards installed in Boston neighborhoods most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, including East Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, Roslindale, and Mattapan. Rooted in Cuban slang and the poetry of William Carlos Williams, the ambiguous phrases featured on the billboards were intended to provide comfort and solidarity to whoever read them, as well as play with notions of commodity and sloganeering.
As the pandemic raged, I kept returning to the question of what artists could offer during times of uncertainty. I felt that the billboards conveyed a sense of hope, but I also wanted to help facilitate connections between people, especially in the midst of so much isolation.
Postcards came to mind immediately as a possible catalyst, one that could leave room for both play and reflection. No matter where you are in the world, getting a postcard in the mail makes you feel just a little bit closer to whoever sent it to you- knowing that that someone was holding it in their hands, scribbling down a message in some faraway place, and most importantly, that they were thinking of you.
I wanted to invite the community into the same process of word play that I had engaged in when I designed the billboards, to think about their own communities near and far, and share a sense of solidarity with others. I was also exploring alternative ways of thinking about the public space, and how words and ideas could circulate rather than remain fixed in a particular place.
I invited my dear friend, Sara Rivera, an artist and writer whose work also considers language in the public sphere, to join me in developing a series of free virtual workshops. In fall 2020 and early 2021, Sara and I held four bilingual workshops in which we asked participants to respond to two different writing prompts. We gave participants ten minutes per prompt, and at the end of the writing time, everyone had a few moments to review their writing and identify a few phrases that could stand alone. Then, as a group, we would collectively decide which of each person’s phrases was most impactful and why. Once the phrase was chosen, we would also consider what typeface and color may be most appropriate for each postcard. One phrase from each person was printed on a postcard, and a week or two after each workshop, each participant received a pack of stamped postcards to share with the world as they saw fit. Below are a handful of examples-some funny, some poignant.
The postcards have made it to Miami, Los Angeles, and Medellín, among other places. Each billboard was scheduled to remain on display for only one month; however, some of them remained up for far longer, and the last one came down just a few weeks ago. But even as Boston begins to emerge from the pandemic’s devastating grip, hope will never be in short demand.