Local public art project PSA: returns to The Luminary with its newest collaboration, featuring newly commissioned work by Saj Issa. The six banner piece - titled “Your Refuge” - was installed on the exterior wall of The Luminary at Cherokee and Ohio on May 17th, 2024.

The installation will be displayed for 20 weeks and was made possible, in part, by funding from the Missouri Arts Council and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

The artist’s statement about the works is as follows:

This question prompts viewers to consider what kind of community one will create when the Empires fall. In an era of mass protests, severe societal injustices, and abuses of power, we are in need of sincere solidarity from one another. As we continue to educate ourselves on the ways liberation is a collective, it is important to reflect on which allyships one will build to respect, support, and reciprocate assistance.

Saj Issa (b.1994, St. Louis, MO) is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in St. Louis, MO. Her practice explores themes of intervention thorugh her lived experiences growing up in STL and West Bank. Palestine. Her practice weaves between painting and sculpture. The golden rule she has when it comes to her practice is that it must remail fund.

Issa is a recipient of the 2024 Great Rivers Biennial Arts Award at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. She earned a BFA from Webster University and an MFA from the University of California Los Angeles.

PSA: features text installations by St. Louis artists, writers, and poets and is organized by artists Shannon Levin and Marina Peng. Work has been displayed in various locations throughout the region, including the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, 2222 Chippewa in Marine Villa and as part of The Luminary’s billboard project launched in November 2020.

• Tasha Nicole Burton: Today You Meet Yourself. FA 2023 - SP 2024

• Adrian Octavius Walker: We Matter. FA 2022 - SP2023.