Prabal Gurung is proud to join the For Freedoms billboard project: 2020 Awakening. The project was inspired by the Wide Awakes, an 1860s band of abolitionist dreamers whose communal confrontation of partisan instability led to the election of Abraham Lincoln. For Freedoms is erecting billboards in all 50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands, through the 2020 election, touching on the themes of healing, listening, justice, and awakening.

The piece by Prabal Gurung is entitled “American Dream = Segregated Nightmare?” and was intentionally positioned in the swing state of North Carolina in Peachland, with the goal of sparking an important dialogue on the oppression of marginalized communities in the United States of America due to systemic racism and structural inequities. The billboard features imagery from the brand’s Spring 2020 collection, whose theme “Who Gets to be American?” was inspired by the 2018 TIME magazine cover created by For Freedoms bearing this same question. Gurung’s piece questions not only who gets to claim the American identity, but confronts the American Dream ideal and how it has contributed to racial, social, and economic disparities and injustices across the nation.

“I am so honoured to participate in this inspiring project created by For Freedoms. To be counted amongst this esteemed group of artists and thought leaders is a dream. My piece ‘American Dream = Segregated Nightmare?’ was created to challenge what this dream really stands for, and who it serves – and more importantly who it marginalizes. For too long, this country has left behind and exploited its Black, Brown, Asian, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, and undocumented family in pursuit of an ideal that has left us divided and wounded. As a nation, it is our patriotic duty to continue in our resistance and challenge the very fabric from which this country that we love was weaved.” – Prabal Gurung

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