Part 1
The Art of Activism: Chapter 2
1.) "The creative process is something that every artist develops and masters over the course of many years, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach."
- My creative process is mostly reverse-engineering the parts of artworks I like and figuring out how to make them fit the project I'm working on.
2.) "In order for our creativity to progress, we need to allow ourselves the freedom to make fools of ourselves."
- I put off learning a lot of things out of the fear of not liking the first thing I create. I realize now that this fear is what holds me back.
Towards A Curatorial Activism
1.) "What’s even more disturbing is that these mainstream master narratives of art, in which large constituencies of people are ghettoised and excluded from the big-white-boy narrative, are presented as natural, as common sense, and these discriminatory practices are rarely challenged."
- I remember watching a video about how Abercrombie and Fitch's CEO rebranded the company to market its apparel towards "cool kids", those kids being white and conventionally attractive. It's interesting to me how little things have changed over the years.
2.) "Instead of being disheartened by the sad reality, it is perhaps more productive to be proactively antithetical: to misbehave, to talk back, while dedicating ourselves to disrupting the hegemonic discourse from within by showing the gaps in representation, ‘the blind spots, or the space-off, of its representations’".
- The idea that standing up for more representation in art by people from marginalized groups will be considered disruptive and misbehaving is scary and enraging, but it is only proof that the stigma must be challenged.
What is an art intervention?
-An art intervention is the act of placing artwork in public spaces where art is typically absent with the goal of disrupting certain common practices or social norms.
How can artists create messages for an audience that inspire change in a community?
-When crafting an argument against a certain issue, there are three things in the audience the arguer must appeal to: logical reasoning (logos), emotion (pathos), and credibility (ethos). Artists are limited in the sense that they cannot present a wall of text to their audience and must create something that will touch the mind and heart within the small window of a person's attention span. Paintings and public art performances are just some of the many ways artists have accomplished this goal.
How can we use processes/habits to help design an art intervention strategy?
-Finding one's personal creative process and the habits that compliment it will allow the artist to come up with better ideas in general. In the practice of art activism, this is especially important since anything that may come across as tasteless or offensive may sabotage the goal of the art piece.
What is curatorial activism?
-Curatorial activism is the process of purposely compiling and presenting artworks created by members of marginalized groups such as people of different races and genders. This process is done in protest against the current social norm of museums and galleries favoring artworks created by white European men.
How can art spaces and exhibitions function to expand art activism?
-Because pieces of art activism typically involves public displays against contemporary issues, preserving them in a museum or exhibition is either diminishing or impossible. Instead, art spaces and exhibitions can include newspaper clippings and recorded footage from the time periods the displays were open for, including public reactions and their long-term effects on the community.
Part 2
The monarch butterfly has been used as a symbol of hope for undocumented South American immigrants in America for as far back as 2012. The butterfly in question is known for its incredibly long migration journeys, flying thousands of miles from North America and Canada to Mexico, often just in time for Dia De Los Muertos, or The Day of The Dead. My family was able to enter the country legally, thanks to my father's hard work, but our sudden journey here was scary, even with the conveniences of air travel and relatives who already lived in the States. Most other immigrants don't get the luxuries I got. I want to dedicate my talents to making it easier for immigrants to live their lives in a country that doesn't understand it needs them.
My current idea is inspired by Favianna Rodriguez's "Migration is Beautiful. Migration is Natural" installation from 2017. I'm planning to create posters asking anyone who's migrated here to stick a paper butterfly on a wall somewhere in public, without any names for the people's safety.
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