In Philadelphia public schools, the disappearance of arts programs often foreshadows the elimination of far more: students of 24 schools saw their art classes disappear during a wave of closures in 2013. The reForm Project, an ongoing art installation facilitated by installation artist Pepón Osorio, confronts the drama of Philadelphia’s shuttering public schools from their students’ perspective. Osorio collaborated with students from North Philly’s Fairhill Elementary School, closed in 2013, to create an immersive, multimedia art installation using repurposed materials from their school. The result is a compelling investigation of memory, community and power, within a meticulous recreation of a Fairhill classroom.
Located in Temple University’s Tyler School of Art building, reForm is accessible through an inconspicuous basement door that leads to a cubby–lined hallway. Lunchboxes, winter coats and bedazzled backpacks hang from hooks against a backdrop of cheery educational posters. The tableau resembles a typical elementary school hall enough that one could miss its relevance. In this context, the belongings take on an eerie character: Why are they here? Shouldn’t someone be using them?
The classroom that makes up the major part of the installation uses similar techniques to draw compelling juxtapositions. Osorio and his students have replicated a Fairhill classroom, albeit with their own critical interventions. A “Property for Sale” sign covers the teacher’s lectern. The chalkboard displays the text of a letter informing parents of Fairhill’s closing. Pathos covers the walls: The room is papered with students’ handwritten essays, replete with red pen comments, on the closing of their school. Perhaps most eye–catching is a series of videos enshrined in brilliantly collaged displays. Students’ faces gaze out from the screens; over a loudspeaker, they recite a poem affirming the significance of their voices. The display brings the students into their school once again. More than eliminating an institution, the students assert, the closing of Fairhill disrupted a community. The collages around the video screens have an intimate, hand–crafted quality: hand–glued rhinestones and personal photographs emphasize the individuality and creativity of each student.
reForm brings faces and voices to the ongoing funding crisis in Philadelphia’s public schools. Rather than exhibiting students as pitiable victims, the installation presents them as agents of change through creative expression. By recreating a piece of Fairhill, reForm asserts that its students persist, even beyond their de–recognition by the school system. Its hand–crafted details and brilliant colors bring an intimacy to the space. Ultimately, creative expression upends the bureaucratic detachment that dictates conversations about school funding.
reForm presents an elegy for Fairhill Elementary School, but it also poses a challenge to its viewers. By using art to tell students’ stories, reForm enacts the students’ words that ring out from its speakers: “When we speak, you listen.”
ReForm
Tyler School of Art
2001 N. 13th St.
Open noon to 5 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays until May 20
