Today many artists believe in engaging with communities, minorities and basing their art on sensitive or taboo subjects. Even though art in its origin has always been on the cutting edge of society, raising questions that no one dares to answer, only in recent years has the type of work shifted in its construct. Nowadays we see much more the motivation of artists to create work with communities and minorities and not only about them. However this shift is loaded with many different sensitive aspects and the line between creating work with communities and exploiting them has gotten slightly blurred. In his essay "Aesthetic Evangelists: Conversion and Empowerment in Contemporary Community Art" Grant Kester makes the differentiation and explains in what way artists are often exploiting or embezzling work even when they do not mean any harm.
First in order to understand how this exploitation can even occur there needs to be an understanding of the system of oppression, the way it is perpetuated by neoliberalist social constructs. In an evangelist capitalist system of power, the reason for poverty, social gaps between classes or incarceration are not due to a systematic flaw but rather the personal character traits of individuals. As Kester says:
"the "bad" subject (characterized by moral depravity, defective family structures, and lack of identification with bourgeois norms) must be transformed into a "good" subject (characterized by respect for the transcendent authority of property, identification with an individualistic ethos, etc.)(p.17)"
Meaning the solution for this social flaw lies in fixing the behavior of certain individuals, and helping to empower specific people. Thus the poor are to be blamed for their poverty, and the solution is to help them case by case, looking at them as individuals and not as part of a larger system that sustains these social divides.
On the other hand artists often come from more privileged educated backgrounds, where they had the opportunity to receive a degree in their craft, but are interested in bringing their knowledge to less privileged communities, and help improve their lives. But because of their privilege they often do not realize that they are perpetuating that same systematic oppression with their mindset and approach. Often artists working with communities have established a specific opinion on the community, its struggle, its narrative and the solution that it needs prior to meeting with that community. These artists want to use the voices of the community to amplify a narrative that they established without the community's consent. In doing so, the artist is benefiting and advancing their own creative portfolio, while the community isn't benefiting, since the artist hasn't truly addressed the issues that are relevant to that community as its real struggles and experiences are often very different than what the artist assumed. Additionally the community is also capable of voicing its own thoughts and advocating for itself and doesn't need the artist in order to establish itself. Mohanti in her famous essay "Under Western Eyes" explains "The hegemony of neoliberalism, alongside the naturalization of capitalist values, influences the ability to make choices on one's own behalf in the daily lives of economically marginalized as well as economically privileged communities around the globe"(p.229). Even though there is a loss of power to the government Mohanti describes how lack of privilege actually gives an advantage in analysis of social issues.The less privileged may have less opportunities, but by being pushed to the back they have gained their own perspective as well as seeing all the layers of privilege above them. In contrast the more privileged cannot see what lies beneath them, hence have less perspective and ability to analyze the social structures. Mohanti concludes through this that the less privilege have a better ability to understand their needs and the ways to better their lives on a systematic level, and do not need a privileged voice to provide them with these answers.
However artists often see themselves as the ones who can provide solutions and as the privileged and empowered activists while the community is "in need to be empowered". With this presumption a certain hierarchy of activists is implied as well, in which activists who are white/men/upper middle class/ educated are considered "valuable" in helping a community. However someone from the community itself, who might have more knowledge to improve the problem but doesn't have the same resources as the privileged activist, will be considered less valuable. Wu Tsang who created the documentary "Wildness" based on the bar "The Silver Platter" and founded community organizing for transgender people found themselves in a similar struggle with the hierarchies of privilege. They formed a small organization that helped transgender people with their civil rights and lawsuits. The volunteers consisted of trans folk whose responsibility was to voice the community's needs and a few cisgender lawyers as well who came in pro-bono to meet with community members and provide their law services. But because of the service the lawyers provided a hierarchy was formed that the trans volunteers struggled with "We all felt pressure that their (the lawyers) presence was a gift not to be wasted, as opposed to the other way around. Weren't they supposed to be there to support us?" (297).
Even though the lawyers were helping, they were perpetuating a system that insisted that the underprivileged need to be "saved" by the privileged, and because of their education their time was more valuable than the trans voices that provided explanations to the problems in the first place. This behavior results in a silencing of the voices that these communities do have, and forces them to "lean" on external support, which provides assistance but doesn't tackle the system of oppression.
In conclusion artists often try to engage work with communities to better their lives, trying to tackle a specific problem the community is dealing with and exposing it to the general public. But in this way of working they are looking at the micro and not the macro. They are providing a lens that depicts the community's specific problems without linking it to governmental responsibility, institutional discrimination, capitalist and neoliberalist governmental constructs. Without this link they are inadvertently blaming the community for its problem and localizing it, rather than setting it on a global or national scale and returning the responsibility to the government.
Bibliography
Kester, Grant H. "Aesthetic Evangelists: Conversion and Empowerment in Contemporary Community Art." Afterimage 22 (1995): n. pag. Web.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. "Chapter 9 "Under Western Eyes"" Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. 221-71. Print.
Tsang, Wu. "Wildness Artist's Statement." Whitney, 2012. Web.
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