Martha Willette Lewis
These prayer flags began their life as a part of the installation Thoughts & Prayers, a collaborative outdoor installation by artists Margaret Roleke and Martha Willette Lewis, addressing gun violence in America. The installation has traveled to various sites including the campus of UConn Avery Point for the summer of 2024. Thoughts & Prayers made its debut in the fall of 2022 on Governors Island, NYC where hundreds of visitors interacted with it.
Martha Willette Lewis is a multi-disciplinary visual artist whose practice intersects science, technology, history, and human knowledge. Her recent projects tackle such topics as quantum physics, The climate crisis, politics, misogyny and the nature of memory. Lewis’s work has been exhibited widely in galleries and museums in the USA and Europe. She has works on paper at Central Booking Gallery, Planthouse Gallery and the Pierogi Flatfile, all in New York.
More can be found at www.marthalewis.com and on Instagram at @marthawillettelewis Follow the project on Instagram at @thoughtsandprayersart
The prayer flags were made by Martha Willette Lewis, using crowd-sourced tee shirts, each one hand-cut and stenciled with her custom messages. Every flag contains human DNA, signs of wear and a past as the covering on a human torso. They act as fluttering surrogates, protesting and bearing witness to each weaponized incident. “Thoughts & Prayers” is a sentiment frequently issued by public figures wishing to signify piety and concern while also signaling an unwillingness to act on gun-control. The work is a gesture towards bringing people of all faiths and beliefs together with the common goal of addressing gun violence.