Good Trouble Using Forbidden Words: Kathie Florsheim’s UNSPEAKABLE Opens at Hera Gallery June 27
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Freedom of expression is the air artists breathe and banning words is the first step toward banning ideas.
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WAKEFIELD, RI — June 25, 2026 — What happens to a document when words like women, climate, vaccines, and elderly are struck from it? Photographer and artist Kathie Florsheim answers that question in UNSPEAKABLE, a new installation from her ongoing Redline Project, on view at Hera Gallery in Wakefield, Rhode Island, June 27 through August 1, 2026.
UNSPEAKABLE explores the effect that federal censorship of politically chosen language has on meaning and perspective — and how quickly the suppression of words becomes the suppression of ideas. Since 2025, federal agencies have been instructed to avoid hundreds of words in official documents. No official list has ever been released; the list of 200 words was compiled by PEN America and published in The New York Times, first in March 2025, and again by December, when the list had grown to 350 entries.
Among the forbidden words: activism, advocacy, belong, bias, climate crisis, discrimination, diverse, equality, ethnicity, expression, female, inclusive, injustice, privilege, pronoun, race, sex, and women — language used by every American, every day, to describe who they are, what they believe, and where they belong.
The project began with a visceral moment. Florsheim opened the summer newsletter of As You Sow, a nonprofit to which she belongs, and found every banned word used in the newsletter crossed out with a red strike-through. The visual stopped her cold. She began applying the same red line to foundational and legislative texts, including the Women’s Health Protection Act, whose first page is dense with newly forbidden language, and watched the document lose its meaning. Redlined and redacted, it became unreadable. Without words like female, sex, and discrimination, a law about women’s health no longer says anything at all.
“To ignore this clear red flag is to invite more and more federal intervention into every aspect of our lives,” Florsheim says. “Freedom of expression is the air artists breathe and banning words is the first step toward banning ideas.” For her, the gravest danger of a forbidden-words list is the one that happens invisibly: self-censorship, the moment an artist hesitates before picking up a pencil, a brush, or a camera.
UNSPEAKABLE appears as part of “Threading Time and Space,” a group exhibition of Hera Gallery artists conceived in alignment with the national commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution and Rhode Island’s role in the birth of the nation. The exhibition gathers diverse work that speaks to the ideals of freedom, equality, and independence, as well as the dynamic and ongoing nature of revolution. Founded in 1974, Hera Gallery is one of the oldest artist-run cooperative spaces in the United States; its home, an historic textile mill, once central to Rhode Island’s fiber industry, threads the exhibition’s themes through the gallery’s own walls.
In a year devoted to celebrating the nation’s founding ideals, UNSPEAKABLE asks visitors to consider what those ideals require of us now — and what is lost when language itself is placed off limits.
UNSPEAKABLE is on view at Hera Gallery, Wakefield, RI, June 27 – August 1, 2026. More of Kathie Florsheim’s work can be seen at kathieflorsheimphotography.com.
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As You Sow is the nation’s leading shareholder representative, with a 30+ year track record promoting environmental and social corporate responsibility. As You Sow addresses a range of issues that affect shareholder value including climate change, ocean plastics, toxins in the food system, biodiversity, racial justice, and workplace diversity. See As You Sow’s shareholder resolution tracker.