b'artifacts: both artists create objects that carry histories and phenomena within themvessels for a kind of abstracted communication. The way in which these artists take on documents and translations of our moment and of the past, deconstructing them and illuminating their gaps and mutability, reveals the open-ended nature of history and the way we comprehend it. The role of the artist in this instance is to insist on the space of possibility and reinscription, a promise of multivalence and the necessary assertion of individual interpretation.What does it mean to each day attend to a similar subject or form? To work something out over time on paper or canvas, in collage, photography, sculpture? To assess your place in the world, and in history and art history and to interject your position into those sites? In a moment defined by deep divides, unrelenting anxiety, and an apparent loss of humanity and understanding, the role of the artist is all the more uncertain and all the more necessary. The desire to go to the studio or to make something each day is a small act of both defiance and assuranceyou are present and your voice is a critical one in a cacophony of subjectiv-ities and visions for the world. The creation of objects and ideas, as well as spaces to come togetherin so many different formsremains an important means for thinking deeply, for engendering empathy, for connecting, and for being critically attuned to an increasingly complex circumstance. The artists in this exhibition create a record of being here and of bearing witness in an era beset by speeding time, disposable images, and mutable facts. A fist raised in the air, a lover depicted in a soft line, a warning shouted in text, an object made into a sound, a photograph reexamined, an architecture undone, and a landscape reimaginedthere are so many ways to say all the things that need to be said, and these artists are doing the profound and difficult work of figuring it out for us and with us.noteMany thanks to Kandis Brewer Nunn and the The Ford Family Foundation for the opportunity to work on this exhibition, and to her and John Olbrantz for their wonderful collaboration. Thanks also to everyone who made this publication: Phil Kovacevich, who beautifully designed it; Sigrid Asmus, who expertly edited it; and to the contributorsAmy Bernstein, Essence Harden, Sam Hopple, Nicolas Orozco-Valdivia, Nicole Smythe-Johnson, and Charlie Tatumwho so generously and thoughtfully wrote about the practices of the artists in this exhibition. I extend my deepest gratitude to the thirteen Fellows for our ongoing conversation and engagement over the last yearit has been a pleasure.19'