Get ready for the Manifest Justice art exhibit in Los Angeles, featuring the work of over 200 artists including Shepard Fairey, Swoon, and more as well as activists, as a response against recent incidents of racism and police brutality! Manifest Justice is also hosting an art competition to give YOU the chance to display your work amongst top contemporary artists. Click ‘read more’ below to get the scoop via ArtNet.

“We demand more empathy, more accountability, more economic opportunity, more compassion, more dignity, more power and more opportunity for all,” reads a mission statement on the MANIFEST: JUSTICE website. “We demand healthier communities, which means more from each other; more from our school systems and more from our judicial systems.”

Shepard Fairey and Swoon Fight for Human Rights at LA’s MANIFEST: JUSTICE Art Exhibition

Sarah Cascone, Thursday, April 9, 2015

MANIFEST: JUSTICE, a large-scale, social justice–themed art pop-up exhibition and event series is coming to Los Angeles next month, organized by Amnesty International’s Art for Amnesty and Sons & Bros, a California health foundation that looks to offer affordable, quality healthcare to those currently without it.

The event is building on the widespread activist responses to racism and police brutality that have taken place in recent months (see Viral Before I Die Art Project Helps Bring Healing to Ferguson, Artists Take to Miami Streets to Protest Michael Brown and Israel Hernandez Killings, and Police Remove Guerrilla Performance Protesting Eric Garner Death From Armory Show), and looks to employ artworks as weapons in the fight for human rights.

“We demand more empathy, more accountability, more economic opportunity, more compassion, more dignity, more power and more opportunity for all,” reads a mission statement on the MANIFEST: JUSTICE website. “We demand healthier communities, which means more from each other; more from our school systems and more from our judicial systems.”

Roughly 200 artists are participating, including Swoon (see Garbage Bouquets and Beautiful Shipwrecks at Brooklyn Museum Swoon Exhibition), Shepard Fairey (see Shepard Fairey Says NYC Artists Are Screwed and Should Move to LA), Hank Willis Thomas (see The One Must See Art Event In New York This Week: Hank Willis Thomas at Jack Shainman Gallery), Sanford Biggers, and Ross Bleckner (see Which 20 [Famous] Artists Attended Ross Bleckner’s Opening at Mary Boone?).

MANIFEST: JUSTICE is also holding an art contest, with an open call for submissions. Five winners will be accepted for inclusion in the exhibition, with an addition 10 entries to be displayed online. Judges include Fairey, Russell Simmons, John Legend, and Los Angeles County Museum of Contemporary Art contemporary art curator Franklin Sirmans.

“We believe that your voice, in unison with the other amazing artists who are participating in this exhibition, alongside the scores of volunteers, grassroots organizers, sponsors and community leaders, will help to foster important dialogues about race, justice, human rights and bias in the United States and worldwide,” said Evan Cerasoli, MANIFEST: JUSTICE’s community organizer, in an e-mail seeking contest entries.

MANIFEST: JUSTICE is accepting submissions for its art contest through April 17. The exhibition and event will be held May 1–10, at 3741 S. La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles.