The sky is an endless source of wonder, unity, and hope. As we daydream over the shapes of clouds and the emotions of nature, gazing at the sky provides us with a sense of escapism or groundedness. Some days, it might feel like the vastness could swallow us, while on others it provides the expansiveness our hearts crave to imagine new contexts. 

 

But, the sky is not a neutral space. Nearly one year into an ongoing genocide in Gaza, we continue to watch the sky light up over Palestine each heartbreaking day that goes by. The Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) stoke fear and power not only through their drones and missiles that fall from the sky, but also the leaflets they drop, laden with propaganda, fear-mongering, and evacuation orders. For example, on October 13, 2023, the IOF directed 1.1 million people to flee to the south of Gaza. The evacuation orders didn’t mean the South would be safe, and many Gazans travelled there, only to be instantly killed. 

 

In another part of Palestine, artist Rehab Nazzal documents violence in the occupied West Bank. On August 26, she posted an image on Instagram of a military plane in the sky with the caption, “Aerial surveillance, sonic torture, and eminent assassination.” These methods of psychological warfare induce panic, like the Israeli warplanes that have been flying over neighbouring country and Palestinian ally, Lebanon, throughout the summer, breaking the sound barrier to set off loud booms that sound like explosions and reverberate across the land.

 

 

Even when one escapes war, the sky taunts them.

 

 

Even when one escapes war, the sky taunts them. I was saddened to learn as an adult that my mom, who lost both her parents in the Lebanese Civil War, is triggered by thunder. The coziness and excitement I feel during a thunderstorm reveals the privilege of having never experienced war. The trauma of a roaring sky that shakes the body is an endless reminder to those who have experienced otherwise, no matter how long ago it took place. Many people feel this way about fireworks too, while others can’t imagine their colonial celebrations without it. 

 

The sky is not a neutral place and it never has been. Even those who believe in heaven may feel watched from above. The sky is a site of contestation, surveillance, and military violence. Artists who use the sky as their backdrop activate the potential for mass collective consciousness. They employ a language of revolution and implicate passersby as agents of change, connecting us through diasporic and decolonial gestures of feminist refusal. Through artistic efforts, we move from ignorance and complicity to becoming witnesses and advocates on a local and global scale.

 

 

Artists who use the sky as their backdrop activate the potential for mass collective consciousness.

 

 

These five text-based public art projects were set across the skies of Canada and the U.S. to promote justice and freedom. Through the aesthetics of flight, artists channel their “fight” trauma response as a source of creative conviction, persistence, and survival—taking up space to reclaim it, assert people-power, and build momentum for social good. 

 

 

Woman Life Freedom

Miami + New York City, 2022

 

 

 

Leading up to the United Nations’ December 2022 vote on Iran’s removal from the UN Commission on the Status of Women, the public art series Eyes on Iran uplifted the Woman Life Freedom movement to raise awareness and urge for Iran’s unseating. Curated by a coalition of organizations, the campaign expressed solidarity with the protests that erupted in Iran following the death of 22-year old Jina (Mahsa) Amini in custody on September 16, 2022, after she was arrested by morality police for showing too much hair.

 

Eyes on Iran was timed to coincide with the UN’s annual 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, which runs from the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (November 25) until International Human Rights Day (December 10). Eyes on Iran featured site-specific installations around the theme of collective sight. “The world’s eyes have been focused on the courage of Iranian citizens in their quest for freedom, in the face of increasingly grave danger,” said human rights activist Nazanin Afshin-Jam Mackay in a press release. “The Islamic Republic has censored them and attempted to blind the world to the potential of this movement. Eyes on Iran is our response to their call for a free Iran.”

 

The campaign included large-scale, high-profile art pieces, including flying billboards over Miami and New York City with the Kurdish slogan, “Woman Life Freedom” (Jin, Jiyan, Azadî). The artworks fluttered across the skies and over the Statue of Liberty, proclaiming a possibility for justice. 

 

On December 14, 2022, the UN passed a resolution to remove Iran from the commission, citing its continuous undermining and suppression of the human rights of women and girls, often using excessive force. The vote passed with 29 countries in favour, eight against, and 16 abstentions. These actions not only reflect a global commitment to justice, but also ignite hope for a future where the rights and freedoms of women and girls are universally upheld.

 

 

Every Child Matters, Cancel Canada Day 

Across Canada, 2021

 

 

 

In a move to reject state-sanctioned violence locally, cities across Canada held Cancel Canada Day rallies, protests, marches, and banner drops on July 1, 2021. The slogans and hashtags #CancelCanadaDay and #EveryChildMatters are linked to the movement, which seeks to shed light on the impacts of Canada’s residential school system on Indigenous communities. Off the heels of the global Black Lives Matter uprisings the previous year, 2021 felt charged with the dissenting spirit of abolition and refusal, creating connections between interlocking systems of oppression.

 

The Cancel Canada Day demonstrations were initiated by Indigenous groups responding to the discovery of more than 1,300 unmarked graves at former residential schools. Compiling a list of Cancel Canada Day nation-wide actions on their website, the Indigenous-led activist group Idle No More said, “Canada remains a country that has built its foundation on the erasure and genocide of Indigenous nations, including children. We refuse to sit idle while Canada’s violent history is celebrated.” This call for accountability extends beyond these rallies, demanding a national reckoning with a history that has caused deep wounds for entire generations.

 

Canada’s National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation recorded the names of more than 4,000 children who died in the residential school system, but experts believe the amount of deaths is much higher. Their 2015 report details decades of physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological abuse suffered as a result of Indigenous children being separated from their families and forced to attend government-funded, church-run boarding schools, where they could not acknowledge their Indigenous heritage and culture or speak their own languages.

 

During Cancel Canada Day in Kelowna, BC, banners were displayed with the messages “#CancelCanadaDay, No Pride in Genocide” and “Schools should never have graveyards.” Both banners featured “We are still here” in nsyilxcən and English, along with the contact number for the National Indian Residential School Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419. 

 

The rejection of Canada Day serves as a potent reminder of the ongoing struggle for justice and the need for continued accountability and public awareness. Banner drops are a powerful form of resistance; in this instance, they effectively captured the attention of people heading to Canada Day events and disrupted their commute, ensuring that voices were heard and the victims’ lives honoured.  

 

 

Care not Cages 

California, Arizona, Texas, and Louisiana, 2020

 

 

 

Just as in Canada, Independence Day in the U.S. has also seen activist disruption. Staged over the Fourth of July weekend in 2020, the public art project XMAP: In Plain Sight invited 80 artists to create messages of hope and rage, which were sky-typed over detention centers, jails, immigration courts, borders, and other sites of historic relevance in California, Arizona, Texas, and Louisiana. Dedicated to the abolition of immigrant detention and the U.S. culture of incarceration, the project aimed to shed light on the hidden and often ignored sites of imprisonment.

 

According to the project website, “As the planes soared, they made visible in the sky what is too often unseen and unspoken on the ground: the appalling, profoundly immoral, imprisonment of immigrants.” With the COVID-19 pandemic heightening the urgency for those trapped in detention centres, In Plain Sight sought to expose these facilities to public scrutiny, highlighting their existence as “paid for with your dollars and operated in your name.”

 

Described as “a precisely orchestrated, moving, and poetic elegy on a national scale,” the messages in the sky ranged from social justice slogans and words of dissent to song lyrics and a phone number with a pre-recorded message. The campaign was widely circulated on social media and is a striking example of creative disruption and subversion. 

 

Skywriting evokes a sense of nostalgia and romanticism, drawing viewers in and implicating them to reflect on the carceral spaces where people deemed ‘criminal’ are hidden away from society. The project asks us to remember those we do not see, in buildings or spaces that exist ‘in plain sight.’

 

Artist, organizer, and co-founder of Black Lives Matter, Patrisse Cullors was invited to sky-type over Los Angeles County Jail, the largest jailer in the world. Her message “Care not Cages” is an abolitionist call to action. “We are artists from across the world denouncing racial capitalism and our governments’ addiction to greed, punishment, and man-made disaster,” read a statement on the XMAP website. 

 

Cullors told NPR, “Half of the people in jails are there because they can’t afford bail. If someone who is undocumented goes inside, they’re not released but handed over to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). What we are challenging the county to do right now is to invest in our communities through an alternatives-to-incarceration fund.”

 

In Plain Sight not only challenges our collective conscience but also paves the way for a future where justice and compassion replace systemic punishment and neglect.

 

 

What is a Flag on Stolen Land?

Winnipeg, 2023

 

 

 

Challenging entrenched narratives on national identity, Nigerian Canadian visual artist Kosisochukwu Nnebe displayed a series of artistic flags outside the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) from August to September, 2023. Titled What is a Flag on Stolen Land, the public art project disrupts conventional notions of nationalism and patriotism by reexamining the role of the flag.

 

 The flags explore how newcomer and immigrant communities can relate to the new lands they now call home—and its first inhabitants—while challenging colonial logic. They highlight how the Canadian dream often obscures the realities of colonization and ongoing state violence against Indigenous Peoples. In person, the flags had a commanding presence, putting a refreshing spin on the entrance of a museum heavy with its own history of racism and anti-Blackness (Look up #CMHRstoplying).

 

In an interview with Nnebe conducted a year after the project, she confirmed that installing the work outside the museum was in part to critique the notion of human rights, as well as to relate to Camp Marcedes, a protest encampment behind the museum advocating for a landfill to be searched for the remains of two of four Indigenous women slain by a serial killer. A search has finally been confirmed and will begin this fall.

 

“The idea of terra nullius and the land being free for claim was a whole attempt to dehumanize Indigenous Peoples and to not consider their claim to land as being viable,” said Nnebe. “So who gets to have human rights is a part of the question. It is a critique of everything that derives from nationalism and a liberal kind of democracy that has always attempted to keep people on the outskirts of what and who deserves protection.” 

 

By placing the flags outside the museum, Nnebe encourages reflection and amplifies the ethos of the encampment behind it. The question, “What is a flag on stolen land?” unravels colonial claims to land and gestures toward the consequences of settler entitlement and imperial domination.

 

The flags, presented in both English and Igbo, were handmade by newcomer women from Winnipeg sewing cooperative The Cutting Edge. They also participated in a training session organized by Nnebe to learn about treaties as a way to “address the shortcomings in how newcomers are brought into the fold of Canada as a settler colonial state” and respond to recommendations 93-94 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that pertain to educating newcomers. The care and intention invested in the flags’ production and placement enhance the strength of this impactful work.

 

 

Save Palestine, Ceasefire Now 

Austin, 2023

 

 

 

As artists and activists continue to challenge systemic injustices and question national narratives, their work often intersects with broader struggles for human rights and liberation. Since the intensified violence in Gaza last October, Palestinians have been leading the fight to educate the public about the genocide, demand a ceasefire and an end to the occupation, and garner support for Palestinians on the ground. The global displays of solidarity demonstrate a growing consciousness toward Indigenous struggles worldwide and an embrace of the Free Palestine movement.

 

On November 2, Texas Governor Greg Abbott arrived in Israel for the third time since 2015. His press release that day reaffirmed his “enduring and unwavering support of the State of Israel, the Israeli people, and Israel’s right to self-defense amid acts of war by the brutal terrorist organization Hamas.” Abbott is among countless politicians in the West who victim-blame Palestinians in their quest for liberation and misrepresent the struggle as merely the “Israel-Hamas war.” 

 

The next day, approximately 10,000 people gathered at the Texas State Capitol for an all All Out For Palestine rally, with organizers from the Palestinian Youth Movement speaking and leading chants. A plane circled above the Capitol with the message “Save Palestine Cease Fire Now!” while protestors chanted, held signs, waved flags, and set off smoke bombs to increase attention and show support for the Palestinian struggle. 

 

“Our tax dollars should stay here for the prosperity of our own children, not for the death and destruction of impoverished children halfway around the world,” said Austin resident Cally Hibbs to the Texas Tribune. Hibbs held a sign encouraging others to call their representatives and demand a ceasefire. 

 

The rally also included chants directed at Abbott, with protestors singing, “Abbott, Abbott, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide.” The chant, adapted globally with local politicians’ names, serves to expose and resist government complicity in the genocide. Despite multiple UN calls for a ceasefire and an International Court of Justice order for Israel to prevent acts of genocide and aid Gaza’s civilians, the struggle continues.

 

 

Liberation on the horizon

 

In reflecting on these powerful public art projects and demonstrations, it is evident how the sky’s symbolism towards freedom and aspiration creates a meaningful canvas for urgent calls to action. From the poignant flags questioning the legitimacy of national symbols, to the defiant messages that insist on our shared humanity, these artistic interventions raise our faces to the sky to witness what is often ignored. They demonstrate how the sky is not just a backdrop, but a stage for resistance that connects us through solidarity and hope.

 

 

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