Art Heals: Resistance

I woke up this morning to sunshine and balmy temperatures.  And grief.  How is nature not shedding tears of rain, hurling thunderbolts of lament, blackening the sky with clouds of sorrow?

How to find healing in these days?  Most of my concerns in my life as a curator have dealt with art as a tool and a voice of social justice. Resistance is hard. Especially now, when no one feels really safe, or in control, when doing what is necessary, staying home, seems passive instead of active, where does resistance fit in?

Given the injustice we have all seen this week, and the systemic injustice faced by communities of color throughout our history, how to protest, how to resist?  A quotation from the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has been frequently cited these last few days. What stunned me is that he said this 53 years ago. It could have been said today.

“Let me say as I've always said, and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. ... But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard…. [America has] has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation's summers of riots are caused by our nation's winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. [Martin Luther King Jr., "The Other America"]”

This is a brutal reminder, but for me, I do not want it to be a dispatch of despair.   What can I do to give voice to the unheard?  The artist Joseph Beuys has said, “The only revolutionary power is the power of human creativity. The only revolutionary power is art.”  It may not be the only one, but it is a strong one.

Resistance art has taken many forms, including what I call the presence of absence—boycotts, refusals, repudiation.  Others harness the power of the visual, painting portraits of anguish that howl louder than screams. 

 

  

 Resistance by Zahi Khamis,    African Guernica by Dumile Feni,                    

Arab Spring Exodus by Helen Zughaib

We must use the tools we have.   An artist is supplying information on organizations that can use our money to pay bail for those jailed, especially now during protests, helping to prevent the injustice of incarceration for the poor, while the wealthy walk away.   Some artists use canvas or paper, or the walls of the city.  Some use their own bodies (look up Waafa Bilal, Tattoo Casualty, too graphic to show here).  Writers, poets, lyricists, supply us with words so loud and poignant and truthful that they explode ignorance and hate.  From the Bible, through James Baldwin, “The Fire Next Time.”   Next time is now.  The fires are here.  Fires burn, but they cleanse as well.  Resistance must give birth to renewal. If we do what we can, it may not be too late.  I pray art heals.