For the 2024 election issue, the Voice commissioned four alumni artists to reinvent the get-out-the-vote poster in light of the November U.S. election.
Christina Seely ’98 • Erica Lord ’00 • Ethan Murrow ’98 • Mildred Beltré ’91
Download and print a PDF of Beltré’s poster, post in your community, then share your photo: voice@carleton.edu.
Bio
Mildred Beltré lives in Brooklyn, New York. Working across textiles, printmaking, drawing, and installation, she raises questions about social justice and how grassroots movements can reconfigure society. Beltré is a professor at the University of Vermont and cofounder of Brooklyn Hi-Art! Machine, a public art project that explores art-making as a community-building tool.
“Everyone has power; it’s just a matter of who’s allowed to keep it or whose power isn’t constantly challenged.” – Mildred Beltré ’91
Approach
Beltré repeats the symbol of an azabache, a black onyx or ebony charm commonly given to newborns in parts of the Caribbean to ward off the Evil Eye. The artist says those unfamiliar with the symbol often mistake it for a Black Power fist, missing the subtle difference in gesture. “I wanted to use it both in the up and down orientation,” Beltré explains, “one referencing the object, which is a protection object, and in the other orientation, facing up, where it’s read as a call for power, a call to power, or a symbol of power.”
For her poster, Beltré coupled azabache symbols printed on found dinner napkins with the words “Dream On! Another Politics is Possible”—encouragement to imagine possibilities for our democracy beyond what we know. “That kind of language, that idea of dreaming on, and another kind of politics being possible is also related to those ideas about power and protection,” she says. “Who is deemed worthy of protection? Who is allowed to take power? Who’s allowed to keep the power they have? Everyone has power; it’s just a matter of who’s allowed to keep it or whose power isn’t constantly challenged.”
On Art & Democracy
“Leverage your imaginations for something different, and do it with others, not just you by yourself. Everything tells us to stay home, to watch out for ourselves. Changing our democracy is about being out in the world engaging with others.”