Systemic inequities create a shadow and a spotlight. The shadow is the under-resourcing of harm-prevention measures and of support for marginalized community members; the spotlight is hyper-surveillance of these community members, both by the state and by individuals operating as vigilantes.

For many people who have historically experienced traumatic violence, obtaining something like safety only comes after meeting a more urgent need: stopping targeted harm. In some cases the harm is an immediate threat to life itself, and in others it’s psychological harm that lives in the body and can lead to devastating outcomes both in individuals and in populations over time.

In the case of one project below, we witness the imbalance of power by big industry and its environmental neglect that left local residents sick from toxic chemicals, and how artist advocacy can empower a community. In others, artists push back against male-dominated public space and demand a world in which people can move through streets without fear of gender and sexual violence. Another project directly confronts the violence that has led to an alarming crisis: the many missing and murdered Indigenous womxn.

In all of these projects, we witness artists shining light into corners where others rarely venture: daring to confront social norms and suggest new ways of being together that do not cause harm. These can be important first steps—two of many.

When Dan Borelli began his Harvard master’s thesis research into the role of color in architecture, he had no idea that his attention would turn to a Superfund site in his hometown and move further back in time than he could have predicted.

The topic of color led him to investigate the Nyanza Color and Chemical Company’s factory in Ashland, Massachusetts. The town has a Superfund site that was a result of contamination from the factory, which produced chemical dyes until its closure in 1978.

Borelli paused to reconsider the scope of the project. He interviewed families who had been affected by the contamination, including Bernie and Marie Kane, whose son Kevin passed away from a Nyanza-related cancer in the 1990s. “This was very much a slow build,” Borelli says. “I had to meet with a lot of different people who own the narrative, because we’re talking about cancer, loss, and death. So the first thing I did was seek out those people and gain their permission.”

Ultimately, he created a multipart project that invited residents to engage with the history and present of color, contamination, and exploitation in Ashland. At the town’s library, Borelli installed an exhibit that displayed records of the town’s chemical exposure. He worked with the Department of Public Works to add temporary colored gels to streetlights, indicating levels of contamination in different parts of the city. A permanent, public healing garden is currently in progress.

Midway through the project, a land survey and conversations with Chief Cheryll Toney Holley of the Nipmuc Nation revealed that in the 1700s, the land had been taken from the Nipmuc in an underhanded purchase by Harvard University. “I was suddenly looking at the problematic cultural history of Harvard, my primary stakeholder,” says Borelli. “It was a moment for me to expand the original narrative of the project and consider time in a different way. The contamination is going to outlive everyone. So how are we now becoming good ancestors, and communicating forward in time about what our descendants are going to inherit?”

Borelli admits that it can be difficult to measure the impact of a project like this. But there have been real consequences. The owner of the 100-acre site relinquished it to the city, meaning the community no longer has to fight the construction of apartment buildings on contaminated land. Most importantly, he says, the community won’t forget its history. “I am no longer worried about Ashland, because so many people took [the project] up and said, ‘This is our place and our community and we’ll fight the fight.’”