7.2 Confronting systemic racism through art

Art has been a powerful tool in confronting systemic racism. Artists use various mediums to expose and challenge racial inequalities in institutions like criminal justice, housing, and education. Their work often employs institutional critique to question and subvert racist power structures.

Artists challenge dominant narratives and stereotypes by presenting nuanced portrayals of marginalized communities. They deconstruct racist imagery and assert counter-narratives that affirm the agency and resilience of oppressed groups. This artistic resistance helps educate the public and raise awareness about systemic racism's pervasive impact.

Art as a Tool for Social Critique

Exposing and Challenging Systemic Racism

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• Systemic racism encompasses the policies, practices, and norms embedded within societal institutions that create and perpetuate racial inequalities and disparities
• Artists across various disciplines have directly confronted systemic racism in their work, shining a light on its pervasive impact in areas such as the criminal justice system, housing, education, healthcare, and employment
  • Faith Ringgold's painting "American People Series #20: Die" (1967) depicts a violent confrontation between armed white and Black figures, exposing the racial tensions and injustices underlying American society
  • Tania Bruguera's performance art piece "Tatlin's Whisper #6" (2009) involved mounted police officers corralling and controlling the audience, critiquing the use of force and intimidation by law enforcement against marginalized communities
• Artistic critiques of systemic racism often employ strategies of institutional critique, using art to question, subvert, or reframe the power structures, value systems, and operating logic of racist institutions
• Artists may draw upon research, data, and personal narratives to create works that render the often invisible or normalized mechanisms of systemic racism visible, sparking critical dialogue and debate

Forms and Strategies of Artistic Critique

• Confronting systemic racism through art can take many forms, such as site-specific interventions, participatory projects, public installations, performances, social practice, and activist art campaigns
  • Fred Wilson's "Mining the Museum" (1992) installation at the Maryland Historical Society juxtaposed artifacts from the museum's collection to reveal the hidden histories of slavery, colonialism, and racism in America
  • Forensic Architecture's investigations and exhibitions, such as "Triple-Chaser" (2019), use cutting-edge technologies and architectural analysis to expose human rights violations and systemic violence against marginalized communities
• Key historical and contemporary examples include the work of artists Faith Ringgold, David Hammons, Tania Bruguera, Kara Walker, Fred Wilson, Hank Willis Thomas, and Forensic Architecture, among others
  • David Hammons' "How Ya Like Me Now?" (1988) appropriated and modified a portrait of Jesse Jackson, critiquing the commodification and stereotyping of Black public figures
  • Kara Walker's large-scale silhouette installations, such as "A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby" (2014), confront the legacies of slavery, racism, and sexualized violence through provocative and unsettling imagery

Art vs Systemic Racism

Challenging Dominant Narratives and Stereotypes

• Dominant cultural narratives and stereotypes play a significant role in upholding systemic racism by shaping public perceptions, influencing policy, and normalizing discrimination
• Artists can challenge the stereotypical or one-dimensional representations of marginalized communities that circulate in media, popular culture, and public discourse by presenting nuanced, complex, and humanizing portrayals
  • Kehinde Wiley's portrait paintings, such as his "Old Masters" series, recast Black subjects in the heroic poses and opulent settings of classical European art, subverting traditional power dynamics and asserting the dignity and beauty of Blackness
  • Yinka Shonibare's "Diary of a Victorian Dandy" (1998) photograph series features the artist as a Black dandy in Victorian London, disrupting narratives of Britishness, class, and race through anachronistic and ironic self-portraiture
• Through their work, artists can center and amplify the voices, experiences, and perspectives of those who have been historically silenced, misrepresented, or rendered invisible within dominant narratives
• Art can expose the ways in which dominant narratives and stereotypes are socially constructed and rooted in histories of colonialism, slavery, and white supremacy, rather than being neutral or objective

Deconstructing Racist Imagery and Asserting Counter-Narratives

• By appropriating, remixing, or subverting racist imagery, symbols, and tropes, artists can deconstruct their power and reveal their absurdity, violence, and real-world consequences
  • Betye Saar's assemblage pieces, such as "The Liberation of Aunt Jemima" (1972), reclaim and transform racist caricatures and stereotypes of Black women into symbols of resistance and empowerment
  • Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña's "The Couple in the Cage" (1992) performance, in which the artists posed as "undiscovered Amerindians" in a museum exhibit, satirized the objectification and exoticization of Indigenous peoples by Western colonial culture
• Challenging dominant narratives through art often involves asserting counter-narratives and alternative visions that affirm the agency, resilience, and self-determination of marginalized communities in the face of systemic oppression
  • Kerry James Marshall's paintings, such as "Souvenir I" (1997), center and celebrate Black life, joy, and subjectivity, pushing back against the dehumanizing narratives and images that dominate mainstream representations of Blackness
  • Carrie Mae Weems' "Kitchen Table Series" (1990) photographs depict scenes of everyday Black domesticity and intimacy, asserting the value and complexity of Black women's experiences and relationships against reductive stereotypes and erasure

Art for Education and Awareness

Art as Public Pedagogy

• Art has a unique capacity to educate and raise critical consciousness about systemic racism in ways that are engaging, accessible, and emotionally resonant for diverse audiences
• Artists can create works that distill complex histories, theories, and data about systemic racism into provocative and compelling visual, narrative, or embodied forms that spark curiosity and critical thinking
  • Glenn Ligon's text-based paintings, such as "Untitled (I Am a Man)" (1988), incorporate quotes from African American literature, historical documents, and personal reflections to explore the intersections of race, language, identity, and power
  • Sanford Biggers' "BAM" series sculptures (2015-2017) are made from bronze casts of African statues dipped in wax and riddled with bullet holes, viscerally evoking the violence and trauma inflicted on Black bodies throughout history
• Art can make the abstract or academic concepts related to systemic racism more concrete, personal, and relatable by grounding them in lived experiences, everyday contexts, and recognizable symbols
• Public art, performances, and installations can reach and engage wider audiences beyond traditional educational institutions, democratizing access to knowledge about systemic racism and catalyzing community conversations
  • Dread Scott's "Slave Rebellion Reenactment" (2019) performance involved hundreds of volunteers reenacting the 1811 German Coast Uprising in Louisiana, the largest slave rebellion in US history, bringing this suppressed history to life in a provocative public spectacle
  • Nari Ward's "We the People" (2011) installation at the New Museum featured the US Constitution's opening phrase spelled out in shoelaces donated by community members, inviting reflection on the gaps between American ideals and realities of citizenship and belonging

Activist Art and Social Practice

• Activist art and social practice projects often have an explicit educational dimension, using participatory workshops, dialogues, and creative processes to foster awareness and understanding of systemic racism among participants and publics
  • Rick Lowe's "Project Row Houses" (1993-present) transformed a block of abandoned shotgun houses in Houston's historically Black Third Ward into a vibrant community hub for art, education, and social services, combating the systemic disinvestment and neglect of the neighborhood
  • Suzanne Lacy's "The Oakland Projects" (1991-2001) engaged youth, police officers, and community members in Oakland, California in a series of dialogues, performances, and public art projects addressing issues of racial profiling, police brutality, and media representations of youth of color
• Art can serve as a pedagogical tool in both formal and informal educational settings, providing entry points for teaching and learning about the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of systemic racism across disciplines
• By bearing witness to the realities of systemic racism and its impact on marginalized communities, art can build empathy, challenge denial or complacency, and mobilize support for anti-racist education and activism

Effectiveness of Artistic Interventions

Contextual Factors and Limitations

• While art can be a powerful tool for exposing and challenging systemic racism, its effectiveness in actually dismantling entrenched systems of oppression is shaped by various contextual factors and limitations
• The impact of artistic interventions is often difficult to measure or quantify, as they may work indirectly by shifting public consciousness, influencing cultural narratives, or inspiring further activism and organizing over time
• Evaluating effectiveness requires considering questions of reach, engagement, and reception - which audiences are encountering the work, how are they interpreting and responding to it, and what actions or conversations is it prompting?
  • Kara Walker's public art installation "A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby" (2014) attracted widespread attention and sparked intense debates about the representation of race, gender, and slavery, but also faced criticisms of sensationalism, exploitation, and reinforcing stereotypes
  • Christoph Büchel's "Barca Nostra" (2019), which displayed the wreckage of a ship that sank in the Mediterranean killing hundreds of migrants, was intended as a memorial and critique of Europe's migrant crisis but was accused of aestheticizing suffering and failing to center migrant voices and agency
• Confronting systemic racism through art often entails risks and challenges, such as backlash, commodification, or co-optation, that can limit or undermine the work's critical edge and emancipatory aims

Integrated Struggle and Long-Term Change

• The transformative potential of art is enhanced when it is integrated into broader social movements, community organizing, and policy advocacy efforts aimed at systemic change
  • The Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, founded in 1969 by artists and activists in New York City, mobilized protests, boycotts, and counter-exhibitions to challenge the exclusion and misrepresentation of Black artists in museums, linking cultural struggle to the broader Black Power movement
  • Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, has consistently integrated art and performance into her organizing work, from the "Freedom Square" occupation in Chicago to the "Power: From the Mouths of the Occupied" theater project in Los Angeles, using cultural production as a tool for political education, community building, and direct action
• Artistic interventions that are grounded in and accountable to the communities most directly impacted by systemic racism, and that prioritize their leadership, agency, and self-determination, are more likely to contribute to meaningful and sustainable change
• Assessing the role of art in dismantling systemic racism ultimately requires a long-term view and an expansive understanding of how cultural change and political struggle are intertwined, incremental, and ongoing
  • The anti-racist cultural organizing of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, from the 1930s to the 1960s, played a pivotal role in nurturing the music, art, and activist traditions that fueled the Civil Rights Movement, exemplifying the slow, patient work of movement-building through art and education
  • Contemporary initiatives like the Center for Artistic Activism's training programs and the Laundromat Project's community art programs aim to build the long-term capacity of artists and activists to effect systemic change, recognizing that dismantling racism requires sustained, intergenerational struggle across multiple fronts, from the cultural to the political to the economic