To Be Heard at the University of Michigan is a public mural project and exhibition by Brooklyn-based street artist, painter, and activist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh.

The exhibition Pressed Against My Own Glass will be installed in the Institute for the Humanities Gallery. In this multimedia installation on Black womanhood within the home space, Fazlalizadeh explores her childhood and adulthood within the domestic space and how it connects to the experiences of other Black women and those who had a girlhood. Using paintings, drawings, video, and reappropriated home objects, she examines her experiences of joy, rest, sadness, and fellowship in the home. While doing so, she makes connections to her Black women peers, even those like Breonna Taylor and Atatiana Jefferson who show how racist violence is a threat to Black women even in their homes.

About the Public Mural Project:

To Be Heard, public mural project, September 28-October 16, 2022. Locations: Angell Hall, Trotter Multicultural Center, Modern Languages Building, Shapiro Library.

The public mural component utilizes community engagement, public art, and social practice to listen to and amplify the voices of marginalized groups, particularly women and non-white students at the University of Michigan. Through class workshops and interviews, Fazlalizadeh will engage with Black and brown, queer, and women-identified students on the ways that they experience race and gender on campus, exploring how students are treated based on their identities. The engagement will culminate in public art installation across campus using drawings and photos to present the experiences and stories from these students back to the public.