Tea and Letters for Liberation

Amber Ginsburg has collaborated with Aaron Hughes on the Tea Project since 2009. She is a Chicago-based artist teaching at the University of Chicago. She creates site-generated projects and social sculptures that insert historical scenarios into present-day situations, as well as engage present-day histories to imagine alternative futures. 

Amber often works with long-term and ongoing collaborators, and together they engage multiple communities and elicit working relationships with experts in the fields of biology, political activism, legal scholarship and activism, and science fiction.

Follow Amber at amberginsburg.com.

Aaron Hughes has collaborated with Amber Ginsburg on the Tea Project since 2009. He is a Chicago-based artist, curator, organizer, teacher, anti-war activist, and Iraq War veteran. He works collaboratively in diverse spaces and media to create meaning out of personal and collective trauma, deconstruct and transform systems of oppression, and seek liberation. 

Working through an interdisciplinary practice rooted in drawing and printmaking, Hughes develops projects that deconstruct militarism and related institutions of dehumanization.

Follow Aaron at aarhughes.org.

The Tea Project is an ongoing dialogue that traverses a variety of landscapes. From the tea sipped at a family gathering, to a cage in Guantanamo Bay, to a motor pool in Iraq, tea is not only a favored drink but a shared moment that transcends cultural divides and systems of oppression. When someone sits, sips, and reflects over a cup of tea there is space to ask questions about one’s relationship to the world: a world that is filled with dehumanization, war, and destruction; a world that is filled with moments of beauty, love, and humanity.