The Affirmation Project is a public art practice by artist and writer Nicole Leth. Since 2010, she has shared original works of art and personal journal writing anonymously and freely in public spaces, creating unexpected moments of care that have quietly reached over 150 million people. It is rooted in tenderness, connection, and the belief that small, sincere acts can help us feel less alone.
About the artist:
Hi, my name is Nicole. I am an artist, writer, and human being living in Asheville, North Carolina. My work centers on integrating compassion, joy, and a sense of belonging into unexpected and accessible spaces. The Affirmation Project is one public limb of my larger art practice.
I began this body of work in 2010 after losing my father to suicide following a long battle with addiction and mental illness. In the early days, it looked like a 17 year old version of me driving around my Iowa town with a journal and a bag of spray paint, stopping at abandoned buildings and warehouses to leave anonymous words of care for someone else to find. In many ways, this practice saved my life. It became a way to alchemize trauma and create beauty from the hardest parts of being human. I wrote the words I needed to hear and shared them anonymously in public, hoping they might help someone else, too.
Over time, what began as a quiet personal act grew into a full time art practice supported by donors, grants, partnerships, and a global community. Every piece of writing is original and created by me, often drawn directly from my personal journals, and shared in anonymous, free, and accessible ways.
Through this public work, I have placed tender and honest poem like messages on roadside billboards, airplane banners, semi trucks, barges, wheat pasted posters, stickers, yard signs, handmade quilts, fliers, and murals around the world. I have collaborated with cities, schools, hospitals, prisons, and psychologists to integrate compassion into public environments and everyday spaces.
From 2019 to 2025, I also mailed over 200,000 anonymous postcards featuring excerpts from my journals to people around the world, most of them addressed and stamped by hand at my dining room table. The project reached every continent except Antarctica.
To date, I have installed more than 600 anonymous affirmation billboards and hundreds of other public works. This practice has been experienced by over 150 million people worldwide and received a Lifetime Achievement OBIE Award in 2020.