Sheryl Oring

Oring was born . Her parents were both academics. As a child, she moved to New York, near Cornell University, where she was exposed to political advocacy at a young age. She then moved to California, where she worked as a journalist for about a decade. the San Francisco Chronicle, and briefly at The New York Times. and served as the Chair of the James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University. =="I Wish to Say"==

Oring grew frustrated that many Europeans stereotyped Americans as supporting war in general and the 2003 Iraq War specifically. She moved back to the United States, and created a performance art piece called "I Wish to Say." Oring continued doing similar participatory artworks using a typewriter for decades. Within the first year, she had typed 600 postcards and travelled 5,000 kilometers setting up the exhibit in different U.S. states. In 2006, Oring did a performance on the U.S. President's birthday, whereby participants wrote birthday messages to the President. The themes of the performances have changed over time, with changes in popular political issues, policies, and presidents. By 2018, Oring had typed several thousand postcards and performed the work more than 71 times. Some of the postcards were used in an art exhibit at the Museum of the Kennedys in Berlin, Germany and she wrote a book based on the exhibit called "Activating Democracy: The 'I Wish to Say' Project." The book is focused on free speech and political participation. Oring won several awards and grants as a result of the exhibit series, such as a grant from Creative Capital and a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. ==References==