January 30th; Emily D

A photograph of Breonna Taylor, projected onto the statue of Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va., July 2020

 Honestly this work hurt a bit so I decided to choose it to discuss as it has some deep feelings. Of course, paying tribute to a woman such as Breonna Taylor is a good thing to do but she should not HAVE to be a symbol. She was a woman trying to live her life and she got horrifically shot in her apartment by several police officers who forced entry into her home. She should be walking among us today, just like every other symbol of the BLM movement should be but unfortunately our country and society is messed up. Ideally, people, real human lives should not be symbols, martyrs for a cause. Human lives are precious and so often taken because of corruption and the acts of malice. The cause shouldn't exist in the first place, if the horrible systems weren't in place. No one should have to die due to these sick atrocities and acts. Minorities should not fear for their lives on the daily, especially from the “protectors” of society such as police. 

   The country was built with its horrors that still seep into today and it's heartbreaking. The art of taking her image and BLM, projecting them on a Confederate General’s monument is striking due to the juxtaposition of horror and praise. It's horrific that this confederate officer was given a monument, symbolic of the reoccurring racist ideologies of the confederacy. Yet putting a victim of police brutality there gives her the spotlight of revolutionary honor instead. At the same time, she is deceased so it just feels like a gut punch that this woman is being represented due to her death. The life of a beautiful woman was taken and I wish she could've been alive to have a chance to have her name recognized for what she could do in life rather than in death. I wonder what Breonna Taylor would think had she known what her image would represent one day. I don't think anyone living their lives, trying to get by would want to be a martyr. But I know it means a lot to many of people. I just hope we can get past these issues and grow as a society so we don't have to continue making mistakes for the sins of our colonizers. 

An Introduction to Activist Art | The Collector | by Stefanie Graf

“A ban on the painting was announced in the newspaper and it caused an outrage that forced the royal court to give their permission for the exhibition of the painting.”

• Whenever I read about art as a method of protest with deep meaning, not only am I reminded that most art as artifacts are a sacred source of history but also there’s so many instances of intentional resistance in paintings. I can’t remember the specifics at the very moment, but various popular artists even in the Renaissance would be commissioned to do a work and would put specific figures toward the side of hell rather than heaven, implying they’ve done something in their lives that’s unholy. That’s an ultraspecific memory triggered by the sequence above and I can’t find the specifics in my Renaissance notes but I remembered because of this although it’s a bit off topic. I just find it interesting when artists are intentionally bold and insert their opinions into their work exceptionally clearly. My bad if this is too off topic. 

“As a reaction to the violence of the war and political circumstances, Dada artists rejected traditional representations and like the French artist Jean Arp put it, tried to discover an unreasoned order”

• I find it interesting reading about how each century uses their art to protest against violence and war. Back then, it was rejecting traditional representations. Today, I see on Instagram social media artists starting hashtags with their original characters holding up a Palestinian flag or drawing victims that have died. Some of them are a bit arguably distasteful, while others are more informed. The digital age has definitely influenced younger people and artists, much of protest art evolving and shifting completely. 

WHY ARTISTIC ACTIVISM? | Center for Artistic Activism

“While Artistic Activism is particularly well suited for the contemporary moment, throughout history the most effective civic actors have married the arts with campaigns for social change, using aesthetic approaches to provide a critical perspective on the world as it is and imagine the world as it could be.”

• I feel as though art activism encapsulates a combination of aesthetics, the history of art and literature, social, cultural, and historical contexts of the world. I feel literature and culture are a big part of art and social change, as literature can inspire visual art and the written word has its own power as well. Using literature as a way for social change through writing representation, for example, can also be done through visual arts but in a more literally aesthetic way rather than within word and mind. A couple semesters ago, I was trying to triple major for education, art, and English. I took several social justice courses along with courses discussing linguistics and general literature. There are so many ways to inspire social change, and much of it comes from education young people and expanding their understandings through a variety of methods. 

““I’m not political,” is a phrase one hears often; it’s a rare person, however, that doesn’t express themself through some form of creativity.”

• My mother has always been the type of person to say “I'm not political” or “I don't care about (insert literally any political or social issue here)”. She's told me over the years I've changed her perspective regarding alot of issues (LGBT+, race and culture, neurodivergent people, mental illness, and so on) but she will still occasionally say things like that and it bugs me. I feel like certain people who were not informed or educated growing up have this perspective that if an issue doesn't impact them directly, they shouldn't care about it. Even when informed, there's still that feeling that you shouldn't care because it's still not yOu being impacted. I never really understood that. I won't get into the… comments she's said in the past, but she's been quite a hypocrite considering the stereotypes she cherry picked to listen to or not listen to. She acknowledges and enjoys the music, for example, of other cultures yet will put the people behind said culture down because of her associations. 

The 25 Most Influential Works of American Protest Art Since World War II 

The New York Times Style Magazine

“A colossal 61-foot equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee has towered above Richmond, Va., since 1890.”

“Other memorials to those who defended slavery — including the Confederate president Jefferson Davis and general Williams Carter Wickham — came crashing down at the hands of protesters in June while Richmond’s mayor, Levar Marcus Stoney, invoked emergency powersto remove the rest on July 1. But the 12-ton effigy of Lee, by far the nation’s most physically imposing memorial to the commander and his cause, proved too large for demonstrators to topple and, given its location on state land, lay beyond Stoney’s jurisdiction.”

• In the past years, I've written my opinions about confederate symbols and statues and how we as a contemporary society should treat them. Some people believe they should be up for whatever misguided reason (crazy info, they're from the south and believe it to be part of their history they want to uphold. Shocker), others believe they should either be taken down or could be given new contextualization in order to educate but also remind people that at one time, the American public praised figures like this without comprehension.

“Over the past several months, activists have transformed the base of the sculpture instead, covering the marble and granite with the names of victims of police violence, protest chants, calls for compassion, revolutionary symbols and anti-police slogans in dozens of colors.”

• Similarly to what I said above, I am of the belief that if these monuments to these “American Hero's” cannot be toppled down, they should be recognized for what they are under the recontextualization of our reality. The ideas these monuments represent are indeed of their time, and much of them represent colonization, racism, patriarchy, and American-made lies. To use them to honor the victims of brutality and using symbols of revolution, we are going against these ideas and acknowledging that these issues and systems should not be in power.