“The Truth Booth” is a project by the artists Ryan Alexiev, Jim Ricks, Will Sylvester, and Hank Willis Thomas, who are members of The Cause Collective.
Photo courtesy of The Cause Collective
Currently and throughout the remainder of 2016, The Cause Collective will tour 24 U.S. cities as part of their project In Search of The Truth (The Truth Booth). At each location, The Collective invites people to sit inside The Truth Booth (a giant, inflatable sculpture in the shape of a cartoon speech bubble with the word “Truth” printed on the side) and complete the sentence, “The truth is…” while being videotaped. All events are free and open to the public, with new locations and venues to be announced as the tour progresses.
The Truth Booth is the brainchild of Ryan Alexiev, Jim Ricks, Will Sylvester, and Hank Willis Thomas. Operating as a team of artists, designers and ethnographers, they work to bring thoughtful, interactive and engaging projects into local communities here and abroad. In this project, they are particularly interested in transforming public spaces into sites for candor and intimacy. By activating a U.S. tour, The Collective aims to empower hundreds of Americans to speak freely without fear of judgment or persecution. While everyone seeks the truth, two people rarely arrive at the same interpretation, which is why the project’s prompt of “The truth is…” is so powerful and revealing.
Upcoming Cities
8/13: Detroit, MI (at Clark Park, 1130 Clark Ave.)
8/15-8/16: Indianapolis, IN (at the Harvest Pavilion of the Indiana State Fair, 1202 E 38th St.)
8/19: Milwaukee, WI (at Lynden Sculpture Garden, 2145 W Brown Deer Rd.)
8/20: Milwaukee, WI (at Increase the Peace Hip Hop Festival, 8845 West Lynx Ave.)
8/22: Alliance, NE (at Carhenge, 2151 Co Rd 59)
8/25-8/26: Salt Lake City, UT (at Utah Museum of Fine Arts, 410 Campus Center Dr.)
9/28-9/29: Des Moines, IO (at Western Gateway Park, 1000 Grand Ave.)
The Cause Collective launched The Truth Booth in 2011 at the Galway Arts Center in Galway, Ireland and over that summer toured the country extensively. The project has since traveled to Afghanistan and Cape Town, South Africa. Within the U.S., “Truth Booth” events have taken place in Charlottesville, VA, Long Island, NY (for the 2012 Presidential Debate at Hofstra University), Washington, D.C., Cleveland, OH, Palo Alto, CA, Menlo Park, CA, Black Rock, NV, Miami Beach, FL (for Art Basel), Chicago, IL, Brooklyn, NY, and Boston, MA. The ideas behind “The Truth Booth” were nascent in a 2006 Cause Collective project, entitled “The Truth is I am You,” in which the artists flew giant inflatable sculptures in the shape of cartoon speech bubbles above the Socrates Sculpture Garden. In 2008, a 300-foot sculpture by the Cause Collective was permanently installed at the University of California, San Francisco. It is comprised of speech bubbles containing a single line of a poem by Hank Willis Thomas and Ryan Alexiev, each of which begins with the phrase “The truth is…” translated into alternating languages spoken by the student body of UCSF.
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About The Cause Collective
Hank Willis Thomas is a photo conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to identity, history and popular culture. He received a BFA in Photography and Africana studies from New York University and his MFA/MA in Photography and Visual Criticism from the California College of Arts. His work is featured in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Oakland Museum of California. He has exhibited at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and the High Museum of Art, among others. He is represented by Jack Shainmen Gallery and Goodman Gallery.
Raised in Alaska by Bulgarian immigrants, Ryan Alexiev received a BA in History from the University of California at Berkeley and an MFA from the California College of the Arts, where he currently teaches in the Graduate Design program. He has exhibited at galleries across the country including he the Andy Warhol Museum, Wadsworth Atheneum, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and the Armory Show in New York, and the Oakland Museum of California. Ryan is also co-founder of the Cause Collective which was commissioned to create The Truth is I Am You for the University of California at San Francisco and the video installation Along the Way for the Oakland International Airport. Along the Way went on to feature at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
Jim Ricks studied at the National University of Ireland, Galway/Burren College of Art and the California College of the Arts. Originally from California, he moved to Ireland in 2005 to become an artist. Ricks was selected for Futures 12 at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 2012. In the last two years Ricks has created and toured the popular public work The Poulnabrone Bouncy Dolmen. Alongside solo shows at Pallas Projects, The Black Mariah, and the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. He has curated shows in Dublin, London, Galway and San Francisco.
Will Sylvester received a BA with a concentration on Documentary Film for Social and Cultural Change from the University of Massachusetts in 2011. That same year he went on to edit, build and tour the Question Bridge: Black Males exhibition, including showings at Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontiers and the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival. As a member of the Cause Collective, Will helped to create The Long March, a 27-monitor installation incorporating depictions of movement, migration and marching from different eras in Alabama history. Will has also served as supervising editor for several projects including “Am I Going Too Fast,” “A person is worth more than anything else…” and “We are not yet free….”