Many artists, many answers.
A collaboration with For Freedoms.
I present the question, “Who taught you to love?” because it’s vital to understand how and who we love and care for. Can we create anything without love? These are important questions to reflect on. Our ideas of who is worthy of love are often shaped by the cultural messages we receive. We are influenced in ways we may not even notice by the media, popular culture, and advertising. I hope by raising these questions, people will think critically about the messages they receive from the images all around them every day.
In 2020, For Freedoms launched its Awakening campaign featuring work from more than 85 artists on over 100 billboards in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Inspired by the artist Hank Willis Thomas’s contribution (above), we asked a group of leading artists and writers, “Who taught you to love?” We’ve collected their answers below.
These are portraits of my grandmothers in their respective landscapes in Kingston, Jamaica, and West Palm Beach, Florida. They both went through so much just to be in these moments. There are countless stories I was never able to hear. My grandmothers were nurturing and generous. They cooked the best food. And they raised a generation of Black children to be fierce, loving, independent, and kind.
Growing up, I was extremely close with my grandparents. I’ve always been taught to have the utmost respect for my elders and the wisdom they carry. Through the pandemic, so many of our intergenerational connections have been strained or severed. While making photographs in East Austin, I met the congregation of Willie Chapel Baptist Church, who had just resumed in-person services. The people of this church took in my partner and me. Their love and resilience shines in all they do.
“My family is not a mushy family. People show their care by their actions rather than flowery language. It’s people showing up for you in real and tangible ways.
I was cleaning out my closet the other day, and I found a care package my dad sent me during quarantine. He found masks to send me. Those types of things. I’m going to send you a hazmat care package because you’re in the epicenter of the pandemic. I don’t remember my family being like, We really love you and we’re concerned about you. But they send masks. With family, it can be hard to give people the space to change. It’s hard for them to think of you as anything other than the child you once were. I try to stop myself from ever leaning into that type of thinking. They are constantly changing, and I’m constantly changing. Love is about being caught between those poles.”
Growing up, love was always a sacrifice. A thing I watched Black women give with their time, bodies, and dreams. I love you, so I’d kill for you; or, if you loved me, you’d be ready to die for me. Growing into love taught me something a little more nuanced about the generative possibilities of this verb. Love that lives for you, creates with you, and, if need be, lets you go.
More than 90 percent of deaf and hard-of-hearing babies are born to hearing parents, and few of them can meaningfully sign together. After my birth, my parents chose to learn sign language, and for that, I feel very loved. In an act of continued love, I am passing on our family language to my own kid.
I am an abstract painter, and as a Black man and an artist living now, I feel a need to incorporate the Black body in my work. To talk about our history, our legacy, our power. These figures are African soldiers who fought in the first and second World War. They fought against tyranny and white supremacy, and for equal justice and freedom.
Learning how to see beauty, understand it, and live with it taught me how to love. Beauty is love, and love is beautiful.
“My parents met in a peyote ceremony. My dad was a roadman in the Native American church. My mom was saved by Jesus in front of the TV by a televangelist. Growing up, it was clear that our parents loved us, and maybe a notch above that was their love of God. That’s sort of the worldview I was raised in. The idea that the most important thing in the world is your love of God. And that can be a catastrophe if you’re experiencing a crisis of faith. That’s the place I found myself when I found fiction. I’d been reading religious texts and philosophy and psychology before I found Kafka, Borges, Clarice Lispector, and Robert Walser. They were all doing something kind of mysterious and powerful with language. I was drawn to fiction the same way that as a child I’d been drawn to something as big as God. It bred an intensity in me that, eventually, I learned to hone. It filled a giant hole that I didn’t even know what to do with.”
My father died for me when I was 7 years old. He was tall and had a black mustache and a camera hanging from his neck. At least that’s how I remember him. He died at alcohol’s hands, stuck in between his pain and desire to be a good man. He lived on for many years, but he died to me. I didn’t know then that he was teaching me how to love.
I’m 32 now, and my father passed from COVID just a few months ago. I’ve had to dig deep into my trauma, and transform, and heal. And understand my role as a father of my own son, Tonatiuh. His name means “the one that brings the light, the sun.” He is my greatest teacher. My prayer is that one day my descendants will feel the love that came through me. I’m a future ancestor, and this is what I have to share.
The North Philadelphia home where I grew up — 2531 North 26th Street — was full of life and love. That’s because of my parents, Thomas Meredith Willis and Ruth Ellen Holman Willis.
My dad worked as a police officer in Philadelphia and owned a grocery store and redesigned homes in the neighborhood. An avid reader and serious amateur photographer, he encouraged me to use his camera to make family photographs. My mom ran her beauty shop in our home in the upstairs “kitchen,” where women and girls visited every day except Sundays and Mondays to prepare for work/cultural/spiritual life. I recall sitting in my mom’s shop as early as age 7, reading books and magazines and listening to the women talk for hours — church and clubwomen, singers and housewives, domestic workers and teachers, aunts and cousins. It was a safe space to just “be.”
We were a close-knit family. My mom had 13 brothers and sisters, ten aunts and uncles, her parents, and grandparents. My dad had nine brothers and sisters. I had two sisters and more than 50 first cousins. We shared recipes and stories throughout our lifetime.
My grandmother (Teita) was born in Nazareth, Palestine. At 9 years old, with her 2-week-old sister in her arms, she was separated from her mother as they fled the 1948 occupation. Seven countries, six children, and 19 grandchildren later, the smell of jasmine still brings her memories of home. My earliest memories of love include Teita’s hands handing me jasmine blossoms. She will always make sure the last thing you do before you leave her home is inhale the smell of jasmine. The scent of earth and jasmine from Teita’s hands is the scent of selfless, infinite love.
There’s nothing like a mother’s love, and it isn’t measured necessarily in hugs and kisses and huge pots of okra soup — though my mom, Melliony, provided those things, too. When I think about love, I think of her sacrifice: dropping out of college to take care of her kids, enlisting in the Army to escape the Lowcountry, biting her glorious tongue in the face of sexism and racism so the check she wrote for my piano lessons (I can still play a mean “Frère Jacques.” ) could clear. It’s tough to think about the ways her losses become our gains.
I am teaching myself to love, too, and how to be loved. How to love this Black, nonbinary, and trans vessel I was born into. How to be loved by folx I don’t share blood with. I’m teaching myself, with every fingernail I manicure, every dress I squeeze into, every heel I wear that I deserve to love and be loved despite the world around me trying to snuff out my brilliance. Because that’s part of what being trans is all about, a love otherwise. Love in spite of.
My older sister taught me how to love. I consider her my twin because we’re so close, despite our age difference. She’s my number one role model. I’ve always looked up to her. I’m very lucky. I wouldn’t be where I am now, if it wasn’t for her.
Ixchel Cruz, 15
Depression and OCD have made my first relationship harder than expected. But I’ve learned so much about love dealing with mental illness. Just showing that you can love someone no matter the situation they’re in, no matter what they’re going through. And love someone when you don’t feel your best. Just being there is love.
Valeria Hernandez, 17
You can learn to love by learning what not to do. Learning acts of hatred, or witnessing something that makes you uncomfortable. And I think the “what isn’t” is just as important as “what is.” Because both define what you call love.
Annie Son, 18
There are different kinds of love. The love of your best friend, your parents, your siblings, or your significant other. But I feel like self-love is the purest and most important form of love you can have. Because once you love yourself and you’re comfortable in your own skin, you’re going to be living life happily. I see my younger sisters. They’re so carefree and nonchalant about everything. They don’t care how they look, what they eat, what others think. They wouldn’t change a single thing about themselves. Except maybe learn how to fly or be the fastest person in the world. I’m still on that journey myself. To have that type of love that my sisters have with themselves and to be comfortable with myself and to love myself unconditionally. I think it’s important to stay on that journey no matter how long it takes.
Gaby Salazar, 18
Sometimes through a person’s absence, you learn to love in a different way. By memorializing someone and holding onto their memory.
I was born at the height of the AIDS crisis. My uncle was a gay man like me. He died from complications of HIV when I was 3 years old. They buried him on his 37th birthday. I have no recollection of who he was. He was erased from our family photo album and our family history.
I barely knew anything about him. I knew he worked in Democratic politics in New York City. I know he was the only person in my family to go to college. I knew he really tried to make something of his life. I knew that he was gay and he wasn’t accepted in our Brooklyn Italian family.
I started to appropriate imagery and make collages that addressed that kind of erasure. Then the work went out into the world. My uncle’s partner found me. His best friend found me. And I filled in all the blanks. Where he would go dancing. Where he would hang out with his friends. And I got more pictures. I only had one. My father gave it to me right before I came out and we became estranged.
I have a sense of peace now. Knowing that my uncle was loved, that he was cared for by his chosen family.
My mother, my friends, and my lover have all taught me love in the purest form.
On this journey with my brother as he slowly ... transitions ... returns I’m viscerally reminded to embrace the charnel ground of love
Death each day teaches me to love
Death not to be feared, but embraced
it’s only transition of the physical to the non
which is where “we” came from in the first place...
actually the last place
’cause we really came from the stars
stars that trek, the constant wars.
the dust
to us
to
love
Last year I wrote and illustrated a book about a little girl named Shams, who is made of glass. One day she breaks into a million pieces, but with the help of her own imagination and the guidance of a healer, she transforms from a fragile little girl into a survivor. When I was going through some of my hardest times, like Shams, I had a couple of guides that really helped me through. One of them was my mother. She taught me this beautiful Surah from the Koran. It’s Surah Al-Sharh, the 94th Surah. The crux of the Surah is, “Verily, with every hardship comes ease.” This is something I felt really connected to. Just having that hope that no matter how hard things get, ease will follow.
Frankie is my only brother, and from the first moment of his existence in my life, he has taught me to love. Then Frankie gave me Louie, my nephew. Louie taught me how to love again after the darkest time in our life — the loss of our mother.
Once, when Louie was around 7, I photographed him with his father. He started to get shyer around the camera. I told him I was back in school for photography and wanted my classmates to see my family. He sighed. “OK,” he said. “Just because I know you take pictures of Dad and me to show the world who you love.” He understood in his way. Recently, one of these pictures was acquired by a museum, and he was overwhelmed. I told him our story will never be forgotten. “Can I visit my picture when I am old?” he asked. “Your kids and your grandkids can see your picture when they are old,” I said. “Your photo is forever.”
Pop-Up Magazine is a live magazine that performs multimedia storytelling spectacles at historic theaters across the country. This publication is part of its Sidewalk Issue — a collection of new stories installed in neighborhoods in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Brooklyn.
For Freedoms is an artist-led organization that models and increases creative civic engagement, discourse, and direct action. It works with artists and organizations to center the voices of artists in public discourse, expand what participation in a democracy looks like, and reshape conversations about politics.