Art as Social Activism

“Art as social practice,” that’s the phrase that is often used to characterize a socially conscious form of creative expression that seeks to engage the artist and art work in humanitarian struggle.

You could say it is a predictable aesthetic resolution of a world that has devalued value, that suspects concepts of truth and beauty, that fears work being co-opted into propaganda or that asserts suppositions of cultural dominance or ideological superiority. It is the striving for art that is useful, to participate in social and political struggle, to quit making things that just stand around and create something that actually does something.

Get familiar with the concept; this isn’t the last you’ll hear of it in Dallas. It was the underlining theme of Creative Time’s visits to Dallas and the April symposium that was the culmination of that process. It is also a vision of art that Southern Methodist University’s art school is eagerly pursuing as a potentially defining characteristic. Coffee shop chatter suggests the possibility of the school moving their art department off the refined, faux-Georgian confines of its Park Cities campus and into one of Dallas’ more economically challenged neighborhoods. The school wants to roll up its sleeves and get into the thick of things.

Some of the cast of characters in town in April for SMU’s symposium – Creative Time, Project Row House’s Rick Lowe, the Queens Museum – make appearances in this ArtNews article about the movement. From the article:

One way or another, artists have acted as activists for centuries. But it seems that more and more artists around the world are devising projects that harness their creative sensibilities—and, significantly, their international profiles—to both raise awareness and improve living conditions. Brooklyn-based Swoon, for example, helped build a community center and shelters in Haiti. Vik Muniz advocates for Brazil’s garbage pickers. Most famously—and ominously—Ai Weiwei criticized shoddy construction in schools in China’s earthquake zones, along with other government policies, resulting in his detention last April.

Closer to home, curators Leila Grothe and Cynthia Mulcahy are organizing a community engaging project in South Dallas — a square dance at the Trinity River Audubon Center — that will be funded through grants from the Idea Fund and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

However, as the Ai Weiwei incident illustrated, the art world’s boisterous engagement of political activism comes with its own set of tough questions. Petitions were created to voice artists’ objections to China’s treatment of the WeiWei, yet while both artists and museum directors were vocal, other tougher measures remained off the table:

The prospect of more tangible measures—sanctions or a boycott—was regarded by several museum directors I spoke to as beyond the bounds of feasibility, given the realities of traveling exhibitions and loans, among other cultural, political, and financial entanglements.

But that doesn’t mean tougher measures won’t soon be part of the regular modus operandi of the activated art world, Creative Time chief curator Nato Thompson tells ArtNews. One petition that is currently circulating among artists demands regulation of labor conditions for migrant workers at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi with the threat of eventual boycott. And before we dismiss these kinds of tactics, Thompson is quick – like everyone else these days – to point to the effectiveness of social networking activists in Tunisia and Egypt:

“These are new equations. Artists are finding they can organize and have power in a way they didn’t used to,” he notes. “They’re finding ways their community can demand ethical behavior.”

Surely, artist can demand ethical behavior. Artists, like everyone else, can demand whatever they want to demand. But the jury is still out on the more vital questions:

Are the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi’s conditions worse than those at other museums around the developing world? Will a boycott sever lines of communication with foreign institutions? Are there times when the solutions can become part of the problem? Can the art world really influence China’s human-rights policy?

c. Peter Simmek- FrontRow, Dallas