About

Abolition Now: Images for Study and Struggle (AN) is a digitally curated, searchable, and open-source database that documents an unprecedented flow of social movement art in the era of “new abolition,” which spans from the birth of the Movement for Black Lives (circa 2012), through the George Floyd uprisings, and into the present. The database contains art concerned with a range of issues, and a multitude of movements, that are directed towards new abolition, and its historic antecedents. AN features short vignette and long form interviews with artists, organizers, and curators about the production and contexts of their work and the image. When possible, AN traces how people reuse and repurpose movement art. Recreated as posters, stickers, postcards, book covers, social media posts, and digital shares sometimes in the millions, art often takes on a life of its own. The participatory platform includes educational commentary, artist study guides, a submission portal, and user guides to empower people to build their own Canopy-IIIF digital exhibit or archive.

With research, classroom, and community organizing uses, AN acts as a counter-archive and provides room to study the visual language and scale of abolition. It allows us to work through its meanings, tensions, and possibilities. AN holds space for the labor of movement artists who are otherwise disappeared from or intentionally misinterpreted by mainstream media, official archives, and politics. It is a space of study where people, whether new to or familiar with abolition, can make connections between movements; witness symbols of beauty, hope, disgust, and rage; and explore visions for alternative paths to justice. The cumulative design of the database generates rich terrain for studying and connecting with the ongoing world presence of new abolition images. Every time you arrive at the portals of Abolition Now, you will encounter abolition as its images exist now, which is to say past in present, prefiguring the future, and on the move.

Usage and Partnerships

Any contributor may request the complete removal of their art, all representations of their work, and any related data at any time. We ensure requests are honored promptly and without friction. In doing so, we consciously steer away from the extractive and often violent legacy of traditional archives, which historically served to surveil and simultaneously exclude the communities they claim to represent.

Abolition Now works in partnership with Transformative Now, an international community of people working to build visual literacy through localized art making initiatives that support artists and strengthen cooperation and social engagement.

Our Values

Abolition Now centers the work of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, trans, queer, disabled, incarcerated, and formerly incarcerated artists and collectives. The database currently holds hundreds of works, with associated materials, cued to study and struggle. With participatory submission workflows and community-authored metadata, we seek to be a “people’s archive” of abolitionist images. Abolition Now’s data ethics and critical archival commitments, including licensing, take-down processes, and adherence to post-custodial and CARE-informed practices, emphasize that questions of copyright, description, and long-term stewardship are inseparable from the political stakes of representing abolitionist art and the communities who make it. AN values and recognizes creators and we request any use or reuse of materials to explicitly acknowledge these artists to represent a best practice and effort to be in contact with these authors. The Plateau People’s Web Portal, Center for Black Digital Research (#DigBlk), Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory Project, and other people centered projects inspire our approach.

This portal is an educational site where anyone interested can browse the content. Rights to reproduce material are listed in the "Rights" field for each piece of content. Any contributor may request the complete removal of their art, all representations of their work, and any related data at any time. If you are the rightful copyright holder of this item and its use online constitutes an infringement of your copyright, please contact us at abolitionimages@gmail.com. We ensure requests are honored promptly and without friction. In doing so, we consciously steer away from the extractive and often violent legacy of traditional archives, which historically served to surveil and simultaneously exclude the communities they claim to represent.