“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

– James Baldwin

In 2020 Damien James began spray painting this quote around Chicago, considering the nature (and speed) of change and the idea of good trouble, as vast pieces of society seemed to be stepping backward in time, or simply became louder in their pronouncements of hate.

“For decades I have used text and language in drawings as a means of processing my interior struggles and external experiences. Then, as the pandemic submerged so much of our lives, drawing began to feel far too passive a path to catharsis, so stencils and spray paint in public spaces have been my primary form of mark-making for the last six years.”

How do we witness and reflect a manufactured chaos that rarely recedes? How do we maintain hope in the face of relentless social devastation, genocide and war? How do we answer with love to such active hatred? How do we respond to the writing on the wall?

“All that you touch, you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change.”

– Octavia Butler