Mural Dedication: Showing Face

Join us for the dedication of Showing Face, a project uniting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) youth from the Attic Youth Center and LGBTQ seniors from the John C. Anderson Apartments.

Showing Face was a year-long, cross-generational collaborative project that brought together four community organizations: Mural Arts Philadelphia, the Attic Youth Center, the John C. Anderson Apartments, and the William Way Community Center. Recognizing a generational disconnect in the LGBTQ community, these partners brought together young millennials for whom visibility has become the norm, and an older generation that struggled for representation, acceptance, and legitimacy in the 1960s and ‘70s.

These two groups participated together in what culminated in a photography project by two local artists, Ashley Kolodner and Brandon Dean. The photographs will be displayed on billboards throughout the Greater Philadelphia region, on citywide bus shelters, and in a book.

The goal of Showing Face is to situate the contemporary queer experience in its larger context of an intensely oppressive past, and give youth the opportunity to reflect upon their moment in history. Mural Arts created a space for young people to appreciate their current freedoms while they figure out the next steps in achieving acceptance. The main goals have been to deepen the youth and senior relationship between the Attic and Anderson, and celebrate the diversity of Philadelphia’s LGBTQ community through this photography project.