The Brown Bag Project
What if everything you owned - your most prized keepsakes and cherished mementos, such as family photos, your child's favorite toy or your military medals - had to fit into a single suitcase? What if all your personal items - your underwear, toothbrush, razor, soap, towel, blanket, medications - had to be carried with you every day, from place to place, in a backpack?
In a brown paper bag?
Few of us can relate to the concept of life without a place to house our belongings. Yet, homeless people must often carry everything they own, every place they go.
The Brown Bag Project is a moveable public art installation designed to visually and creatively communicate the forced mobility and sheer number of homeless people in Hillsborough County. Most importantly, it is meant to convey their personal and remarkable stories.
Standard grocery paper bags serve as a symbol of homeless individuals' impermanence. Each bag represents a single homeless person or family.
For the initial installation, 20 portraits, of homeless and formerly homeless men, women and children who live in our community, were reproduced and imprinted on brown paper grocery bags, along with personal information gathered during interviews. The installation of 300 bags will appear randomly throughout Hillsborough County. An installation of 20 bags is available for scheduled exhibition.
To see photos from a recent Brown Bag exhibition, click here »
To find out where the Brown Bag Project is currently being exhibited,
click here »
If you are interested in exhibiting the Brown Bag Project, please contact:
Lesa Weikel
Community Relations Manager
Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough County
P: 813-223-6115
E: Lesa@unexpectedfaces.org
The Homeless Coalition gratefully acknowledges the support of all those without whom this project would not have been possible, including its member agencies and, especially the individuals and families who shared their stories with us.
