Artist, now is your chance.
The time of the artist is now.
In times of darkness, we create light. In times of hopelessness, we create hope and imagination.
The time of the artist is now.
I understand that a lot of people are devastated about the election results. Honestly, I'm not that surprised. In 2016 the first time Trump was elected I was devastated. I had worked in political campaigns with the AFL-CIO and environmental PACS to try to stop it from happening the first time. My soul was totally devastated and pulverized by his first term and what that meant for our country in the long term. During this time, I stepped out of my political organizer career and started painting. I decided to paint my feelings because I was losing my mind, and my heart was hurting for our country. So, I started painting American flags and a lot of angry women.
Fast forward to last week before the election: I was presenting artwork for a gala raising money for a children's mental health and drug recovery nonprofit (STARS Nashville). I like to make artwork for causes that need attention and more people to understand their importance during critical times of need.
I made a triptych (3-panel art piece) of a mental health journey which attendees could physically interact with. Guests could paint the names of people who they have supported or who have supported them in a mental health journey, words of encouragement, or simply a star or heart for sentiment. They could paint any of these things on a scrap piece of muslin fabric, then pin it to whichever painting in the triptych journey resonated with them the most.
So one of the attendees at the event comes up to me and she's like:
“This is why like we need things like this or our people are just gonna die. If trump gets elected all of this is going to go away. Fentanyl recovery and intervention services, all that funding will just go away, and they're just going to let us all die and let our young people die.”
This is very depressing and a lot of people feel this same fatalism right now, but I think the role of the artist during critical times like this is to provide people hope—hope that there is a better world possible— and provide space for people to imagine what is possible.
….Because when we can imagine what is possible, we can do differently. We can strive to do things differently.
People are generally constrained in our society… constrained believing that the world ‘is what it is’ and there's nothing we can do about it. I argue that people think this way because their human agency is limited as soon as they go to school and they're told ‘You can't stand there.’ ‘You can't walk around.’ ‘You have to sit down for eight hours.’
I don't see how anyone can sit still for 8 hours—honestly, I think it's heinous. And to only be able to move around for 30 minutes a day for recess is ridiculous.
As early as the age of 5, our creativity and our agency are constrained.
Some parents, teachers, nannies, and other caregivers make the extra effort to allow imagination and creativity in, but still it's something that has to be built in, something that is often an afterthought as soon as someone is inserted into an institution (be it the education system or even jobs).
A lot of jobs don't allow workers to be creative. Many workers know the solutions to the problems of their bosses but are not allowed that creativity or respect of their autonomy to change their workplaces for the better. That's why unions are so important because unions provide that power differential that allows for workers to have a voice in their workplace conditions and the way things are done.
But back to the point of artists …..
Artist, now is your time to make art about hope, art about possibilities during times of despair and disbelief.
I think it's OK to make art about how sad you are or how angry you are, but for me, that work only goes so far. Let’s really think about what is the impact that you wanna make.
Do you want to make people more sad and more angry? Enough people are sad and angry—believe you me—even the ones who voted for Trump. Why do you think they would vote for someone like him? They are sad and angry about the way things have been for them, they're blaming the wrong causes for that, and he sold them a compelling dream.
But anyway, our job is to make people feel like they don't want to go under a rock. make people embrace life and its possibilities. And I think that is such a beautiful thing.
The revolution needs to be a party folks want to come to.
Here are some examples of artists spreading light:
Artists, Kristi and Brad Montague, threw a parade for their neighborhood postal worker, Dana, and it led to hundreds of other folks around the country throwing parades for their postal workers (https://thegreatdiscontent.com/interview/brad-montague/)
In 2021, the Nashville People’s Budget Coalition along with many other orgs threw a recovery block party after the first wave of the pandemic galvanizing folks with food, music, live painting, and dance and surveyed folks on what they want the city budget to go towards instead of cops and cages.
In 1995 Bogota, Columbia, 420 mimes hired by the mayor (Antanas Mockus) took to the streets of Bogota creatively protesting traffic congestion. Mocking cars for not following the signs and shaming pedestrians, and other creative tactics led over 50% reduction in traffic fatalities. (read more in The Art of Activism).
Undocubus: In 2012, a group of undocumented immigrant activists painted a bus with the phrase “no fear” and images of monarch butterflies as symbols of migration and took the bus all across the Southern United States protesting anti-immigration laws. Now the monarch butterfly is a key symbol of the natural beauty and ubiquity of migration (read more in The Art of Activism).
In 1999, at the Battle of Seattle, a major historical protest against globalization, activists used puppets to make their statement! (read more in TV Reed’s The Art of Protest 2nd Edition)
The Black Panther Party used theater (The Art of Protest).
The feminist movement used poetry for consciousness-raising. (The Art of Protest)
The Chicano movement used murals! (The Art of Protest)
The list goes on and on and the methods are way more expansive than what is simply listed here.
As Robin D.G. Kelley said, “ The most radical art is not protest art but works that take us to another place, envision a different way of seeing, perhaps a different way of feeling.”
Now is our time. Now is the place.
We are the ones that we've been waiting for.
So go and create.
Now is the time to think about how we change how people see and feel. Open people up. Make space for play!
