The Story

These products emerged out of an artistic project by visual artist Karina Pais. In 2008 she started using text-based art to do interventions in public spaces as part of an ongoing body of work addressing issues related to our perception of reality.

One of these interventions is YOU ARE FREE*, which specifically tackles the ambiguity of our notion of freedom. Borrowing from the language of advertising, it uses the asterisk to make evident the subjective nature of our perception of being free, confronting us with the possibility of being subject to external manipulation and ambiguous information, which ultimately contributes to our personal definition of freedom.

YOU ARE FREE* began in Miami, as "guerrilla style” interventions on abandoned buildings in the streets of Wynwood, and has so far made its way to billboards in Prague (Tina B., 2008) and Dresden (Public Art View, 2014). 

Creating a line of everyday life products developed organically as the next step in this series of art interventions while exploring other ways of interaction. What if the message, this statement, can circulate freely and be carried around to different places by people from all walks of life? This was part of the inspiration to establish YOU ARE FREE* Projects as a creative platform where you can participate by wearing and using these “art objects”, and by inviting others into this dialog about “what it is to be free”.

Let’s spread the word!

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