Art & Activism
2022-07-01 • Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer
Elana Mann protest rattles from the series Shake, Rattle, Roll at the “Bans Off Our Bodies Rally,” Los Angeles City Hall, May 14, 2022. Photo: Monica Orozco, courtesy of Elana Mann)
Artist, activist, and abortion rights advocate Elana Mann (BFA03), known for her “protest rattles,” was interviewed in Hyperallergic following the June 24, 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
“We all need a moment to mourn this cruel ruling,“ said Mann, "which will disproportionately impact women of color and poor women…and then we mobilize. I am grabbing on to hope like it is a lifejacket, so I won’t drown in a sea of rage and despair. In my other hand, I am snatching a protest rattle to bolster my energy for the long fight ahead.”
Composers/musicians Micaela Tobin (right) and Sharon Chohi Kim (center) perform with Elana Mann’s “hands-up-don’t-shoot-horns” Sept. 29, 2018, at the Pitzer College Art Galleries, Claremont, California, in conjunction with Mann’s solo exhibition Instruments of Accountability. Photo courtesy of Elana Mann.
Elana Mann is a 2019 recipient of the Sam Fox School’s Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Award. Her work has been presented in museums, galleries, and public spaces across the United States as well as in Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, Germany, Iraq, and Mexico. Since 2005, she also has collaborated with artist Audrey Chan as Chan & Mann. Her writing has been published in Afterall Journal, Art21, and The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, among others. Mann was named a 2017-18 Cultural Trailblazer by the City of Los Angeles. Other honors include residencies, fellowships and grants from Pitzer College, the California Community Foundation, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In 2018, Mann co-edited, with John Burtle, the performance score anthology Propositional Attitudes: What do we do now? (Golden Spike Press).