Unofficial
Voting Station
The Official Unofficial Voting Station: Voting for All Who Legally Can’t is a socially engaged art project focused on creating reimagined symbolic voting stations open to all, but particularly for the disenfranchised. In voting seasons where the disenfranchised are deemed to be silent and invisible, these stations are not only sites for casting symbolic votes but also sites for loud celebration and protest.
The first iteration of the Official Unofficial Voting Station took place in 2016, where I created the project from not being able to vote as a non-citizen immigrant. According to the U.S. Election Project in 2016, 28.6% of Americans, equating to 92 million people, were disenfranchised and ineligible to vote in the general presidential election. This monumental number does not even factor in voter suppression. In 2016, with the support of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, I collaborated with more than 15 artists, activists, and organizations to reimagine voting by creating 25 guerilla art performances, installations, and activations centering those who are disenfranchised. You can see 2016 activations here.
The second iteration of the project occurred during the 2020 general presidential election. The project began with the creation of 50 Voting Kits for the Disenfranchised, a collective kit with art and tools created by socially engaged artists, educators, musicians, and organizers that were dispersed into the world for artists, activists, educators, and students to activate and create their own reimagined voting stations. All 50 went out into the world. You can see the 2020 activations here. Due to the pandemic, where disenfranchisement and voting access became tremendously more present and precarious, this virtual voting station, officialunofficial.vote, was developed in collaboration with Jon Satrom.
This website is the central station that holds and displays the ongoing responses and vote tallies for all the Official Unofficial Voting Stations. It is also the central site to access art and resources about and for those who can’t legally vote.
Currently in 2022, many of the key issues that are affecting us today are not being decided by the people but by the court system and politicians. The questions on this new Official Unofficial ballot are largely asking what are the issues that you wish you could vote on locally, nationally, and globally? The 2022 OUVS is made possible with the support of the Weinberg/Newton Gallery.
Han Sifuentes, Aram. "Official Unofficial Voting Station: Voting for All Who Legally Can’t." Art Journal OPEN, October 1, 2020, Read the text
Aram Han Sifuentes is a fiber and social practice artist who creates participatory projects that center immigrant and disenfranchised communities. Her work often revolves around skill sharing, specifically sewing techniques, to create multiethnic and intergenerational sewing circles, which become a place for empowerment, subversion, and protest. Solo exhibitions of her work have been presented at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum (Chicago), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago), Chicago Cultural Center (Chicago), Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis), moCa Cleveland (Cleveland), and Skirball Cultural Center (Los Angeles).
Aram is a 2016 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, 2016 3Arts Award and 2021 3Arts Next Level Awardee, 2020 Map Fund Grantee, and 2022 Joyce Award Recipient. Her project Protest Banner Lending Library was a finalist for the Beazley Design Awards at the Design Museum (London, UK) in 2016. She earned her BA in Art and Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently a professor, adjunct, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a board member of the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium (NAKASEC) fighting for Citizenship for All 11 million undocumented immigrants and adoptees.
2020 Graphic designer for this project: Ishita Dharap
2022 Graphic designer for this project: Bun Stout
This site and digital aspects of the Official Unofficial Voting Station: Voting for All Who Legally Can’t were created in collaboration with Jon Satrom & studiothread