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
Bio
Christina Seely lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Set in dialogue with the fields of science and design, her multifaceted, lens-based practice maps our increasingly tenuous relationship to the non-human living world. In addition to her art degrees, Seely holds a master’s in theological studies from the Harvard Divinity School.
“My vote is to protect the value of all life, the betterment of our care, and respect for one another and our home planet.” – Christina Seely ’98
Approach
Seely uses mirrors in her artwork to evoke metaphors about the unbreakable kinship between human and non-human creatures. For her poster, the artist reproduced an image of an antelope from her Next of Kin series, in which portraits of taxidermied endangered species are displayed in light boxes fitted with two-way mirrors. The mirroring effect replaces the animals with the viewer’s own reflection, emphasizing their interconnectedness. Although the poster lacks the play of the mirror, it still forces direct eye contact with the antelope.
Seely created the Next of Kin series in response to the biodiversity extinction crisis, which she knows firsthand from two decades of working alongside climate scientists in the field. Instead of frightening or shaming us, the artist aims to build “soft portals” that alter our ways of relating with the natural world. Her goal is to calm rather than agitate our nervous systems as we “fall into tenderness” and recognize our mutual belonging in the web of life. “We all have the right to freedom, autonomy, and safety,” she says. “My vote is to protect the value of all life, the betterment of our care, and respect for one another and our home planet.”
On Art & Democracy
“Art is an essential form of speech vital to democracy. I think this is why, in any revolution, art and artists are seen as a threat to the powers that be. Art is untamable and can pierce the soul, draw up and out what is sacred to a person, and give someone the inspiration to fight for what they care about.”