July 29 and July 30 are two significant days for the Washington DC community. The collaborative, interactive process of painting an anti-hunger mural for the Congressional Hunger Center (CHC) is an opportunity for policy makers, Members of Congress, community activists from towns and cities across the country, students, low-income individuals, and DC grassroots leaders to fuse their voice on the message of “Hunger Exists Here.” Participants in the painting process of this public mural include people affected by hunger, local and national anti-hunger leaders, and the public at large.
A December 2004 report by the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that 9.6 million Americans lived in households that experienced hunger in 2003. Many of this country’s hungry people walk through our cities and towns largely anonymous. They include the 75 year old veteran who skips meals to save money for rent, the working mother who gives her dinner to her children so that they don’t experience the pains of hunger, and the uninsured cashier who cuts a meal out of her daily diet to help pay off a large medical bill. These are some of the people in our communities that experience hunger on a daily basis. Right here in the DC metropolitan area, approximately 400,000 residents are at risk of, or experiencing hunger. They do not know where their next meal is coming from.
The goal of the CHC anti-hunger public mural is to capture a diverse group of people’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences with hunger and poverty in our communities from rural backdrops to urban streets. Artist, Xavier Cortada, expresses his thoughts on what the mural might look like. “I think the image I am conceptualizing is simple and succinct: People (perhaps a family) sitting before empty dinner plates…staring down at them. The background would be covered with the messages we collect on site – and perhaps online.” Cortada is famous for his collaborative large-scale murals and community art projects for the World Bank, the White House, the Miami Children’s Museum, and more. He has worked with groups across four continents to produce major projects like the International AIDS Conference murals in Switzerland and South Africa, and peace murals in Northern Ireland and Cyprus.
The mural will be a “collaborative message mural” which means that words, ideas, stories from community members and organizations will be gathered prior to the July 29 and 30 events. On these two days, Cortada, CHC Hunger Fellows, community members, and the public will engage in the interactive process at the locations of Union Station, from 10:30 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., and the Market 5 Gallery at Eastern Market, from 10:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. The high volume of crowds that frequent these public spots will be solicited to participate. The thoughts of random strangers will be incorporated in the project. Cortada will fuse peoples’ thoughts, drawings, and words into a mural, which will hang in DC Central Kitchen, a nonprofit community corporation that rescues and redistributes food and trains low-income individuals in culinary skills, for ten years.
The anti-hunger mural is the culmination project of the 11th Class of Hunger Fellows. The Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellowship, a project of the Congressional Hunger Center, is a unique leadership development opportunity for individuals seeking to make a difference in the struggle to eliminate hunger and poverty. Fellows are placed for six months with urban and rural community-based organizations and then move to Washington DC to connect their experience at a national organization. The mural will be reflective of the Fellows’ experiences in the field, from food banks in Alaska to community gardens in New Orleans. Hunger exists in communities throughout our country.
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About Congressional Hunger Center: The Congressional Hunger Center (CHC) is a unique non-profit anti-hunger leadership training organization located in Washington, D.C. Partners include Members of Congress, Hill staff who focus on hunger and poverty, and hundreds of hunger fighting organizations throughout the US and overseas. CHC’s primary program activities center upon the Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellows Program and its international counterpart, the Mickey Leland International Fellows Program. In both of these programs, a select group of fellows receive the skills, knowledge and experience to become effective anti-hunger leaders in the domestic and international arenas. As a bi-partisan organization, CHC serves as a center where the anti-hunger community can discuss creative solutions to end domestic and international hunger.
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