“I have a dream…” A phrase made immortal by one of the most well known activists of all time, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. King believed in non-violent civil disobedience through marching, protests, and speaking. As is well known today, his methods were successful. However these methods are ineffective for today’s injustices due to oppressive regimes that respond lethally against any groups that may try to disturb their “peace.” We have seen this in Egypt, Libya, Syria, North Korea, and China. When a peaceful people seek a peaceful means to express their opinions, and voice their outrage at the injustices being suffered by them, the question is how to do so non-traditionally: how to be an activist without marching, protesting, or holding rallies. Art is the answer- civil disobedience brought forth through art. Drawings disguising political propaganda, or hidden agendas are not enough; all forms of fine art must be a voice against injustice and bring light to the opinions of oppressed peoples. Many artists across the world have embraced this type of activism, particularly Ai Weiwei. Mr. Ai’s father was a famous poet in China who was arrested for speaking out against the government. Mr. Ai followed in his footsteps by becoming a political activist through the art he created and through modern social media such as Twitter and Facebook. While critics still argue that art is an ineffective and passive means of activism, Mr. Ai and several other artists and writers like him prove this wrong consistently. By evoking emotions, driving actions, and illustrating their own arguments, art acts as a very effect method of civil disobedience.
Some people argue that emotion has nothing to do with activism; that activism is simply speaking out against injustice; nothing more than a ‘black and white’, logical protest that seeks justice. However famous activists such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. fought for something close to their heart, and their passion evoked empathy, anger, sadness, and all kinds of other emotions in audiences the world wide. Similarly, art gets people to fight for a cause and inspires them to speak out or act in defiance by bringing up emotions and speaking to people. A great example of this took place in China, after an earthquake in Sichuan killed over seventy thousand woman and children who were in schools and houses built by the government. The government had used cheap materials for the building putting the people at risk (Zirulnick). The government silenced the situation, refusing to comment or allow reports about it. Ai Weiwei took the cause to heart, and gathered thousands of family members to lead an investigation. Later, to bring the cause to the world outside of China he held an art exhibit using the backpacks of the dead school children. This exhibit was so emotional and provoking that it soon became an international story. One reporter said,
One of his most iconic works is the collection of children’s backpacks he put on display in Munich following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The backpacks were arranged to spell out ‘She lived happily for seven years in the world,’ a quote from a mother whose child died when her school collapsed during the earthquake. He also helped lead an investigation into the collapses of the government-built schools in which thousands of children died, to China’s chagrin. (Zirulnick, Ariel)
This emotional outpouring is just one of many examples of how art emotionally draws people to issues and evokes responses. More than just driving action, emotion-evoking art makes people bring issues close to them, make them personal, and take them to heart, which in turn draws everyone they tell to the issue, raising awareness. However emotion alone is not enough to fix an issue, to even feel emotion for something people have to know that it exists. In today’s world, even amongst the mass of social networking, and the Internet, awareness is often still lacking in many international issues. In China most citizens do not have access to the internet, and those that do only have access to the extremely censored internet the government dictates. This means that all of those sites where people can go to express their opinions, read stories, and find facts are blocked (Schweiter, Andy). This kind of censorship is just one of many reasons why people are unaware of what is truly going on behind the curtains in China. However through creativity and writing, author Li Chengpeng has “brought social criticism, widely available online, to a broad print audience-uncharted waters in China’s censorship regime.”(Cohen, David. Peter Martin)
There are those who oppose political art as simply because they are distrusting of it, and think that it is simply a marketing scheme to make money; a way of addressing a different consumer market, eager to take in anything that is marketed to them (Brady). These people do have a valid point; political art, even with messages, has been used to simply address a broader market. As writer Fred Kleiner says “Art has served political ends and addressed political themes and issues throughout history.” For example one of artist Ben Stahn’s most successful pieces was the political piece he did addressing the controversial trial and execution of two anarchists (Kleiner). In a western society, far removed from many of today’s more prominent social injustices, it is easy to be uncertain of political art and its motivations. Writer Michael Brady says “Inevitably, it is in a culture and society that puts portable and interchangeable art on its sanctuary walls that the utter ineffectiveness and irrelevance of "political" art is demonstrated.” But what Brady and critics like him fail to see is that the strongest political art, the most moving, and the works that are specifically intended for activism purposes are not marketed to a “consumer market.” Today more than ever that point is evident in the fact that the places where political art is most prominent are in places where “consumer capitalism” does not even exist. Places like China, North Korea, and Libya. This makes it impossible for them to be “driven by economic interests”.
The largest group of opponents to the idea of art as activism supports their argument with the claim that art is passive and accomplishes nothing towards correcting the situation. This, however, is untrue. By using social networking sources creatively, Mr. Ai has been able to drive people to action using methods that would have been stopped by government forces if he had done so in person. “Mr. Ai integrated his blog into his art when he was creating an epic performance titled Fairytale. Through the internet, he recruited 1,001 Chinese people who had never been to Europe to wander around the small town of Kassel Germany during Documenta.” (London, L.T. The Economist. Pg 1). A large part of an oppressive regimes power, has always been keeping their oppressed people in ignorance. If a dictator can make their people believe that what he or she is doing is right, and there is no other way to life, then those people are not likely to stand up and protest because they simply lack any knowledge of any other way of life. Living in the United States this idea is almost incomprehensible. Basic freedoms to information, speech, and education have made the idea of total ignorance almost unbelievable to us. But in oppressive regimes, in this case, China, the people are exposed to things that are heavily censored, in favor of the government. So when Mr. Ai used his words and his art to get over a thousand people out of China to see the world for what it actually was, hopefully now it is partially fathomable what kind of impact it had on these people. The fact that he was able to get such a large number of people, to do something that for them was so incredibly “crazy”, also speaks to the power of art in driving people to action. Tania Bruguera says, “Political art is the one that works on the consequences of its existence, of its interactions and does not remain in the level of association or graphic memory. It is intervening in the process that is created after people think the art experience is over. (Political art Statement)” She proposes that political art can be so powerful it becomes natural to people. For most people this is hard to comprehend, but when I place myself in the shoes of one of the parents of one of the children who was crushed to death in the Sichuan earthquake, I think that seeing Mr. Ai’s backpack piece would truly be an inspiration, and would transcend the field of art, and make me think (Bruguera).
The last type of protest against art as a form of civil disobedience comes from those people who recognize its power in evoking strong emotional responses, and accept that it can drive people to take action both mild and drastic, but think that art is to cryptic to get a strong message of protest to a large audience. There are those that even say art cannot be a form of activism because people view art as, well, art; Something done to be aesthetically appealing, emotionally evoking, but devoid of a deeper meaning. In many cases this is probably true, so it is understandable why some people would think that all political art is ineffective because it is in fact art. While discussing this very argument Michael Brady made this state:
But invariably, artworks presented for viewing as art, in a gallery, will always be seen first as aesthetic. They will become subjected to the rule of taste and connoisseurship and will become detached in an important way from their actual, denoted subject matter (as in this case). They are seen as things made within the conventions of art and aesthetics. Moreover, one profound by-product of an exhibition--whether it's of Hockney or Fischl or Ramesses or Monet, whomever--is that the various pieces lose their individual identities. Each becomes yet another painting of California pools, or another scene of ennui, etc. Their relation to each other and to other works of art is as important as--if not more than--their represented subjects. They become more an exhibition of the artist's choices and style than of her subject. This, of course, is the fate of any art exhibition (Brady).
While this may be true on a limited scale, to generalize it to “the fate of any art exhibition” is incorrect. Mr. Ai’s backpack exhibition in Munich was proof of that, not to mention how many political artists today completely disregard aesthetics altogether to simply create a piece of work with a deep, clear meaning. Pieces of art that will inspire people. Ai Weiwei is one such artist, who did such a fantastic job that the Chinese government bulldozed all of his studios in China. As opposed to taking a hint, Mr. Ai gathered the pieces from the rubble and started constructing another piece of political art out of it. Shortly after which he was arrested when trying to get out of the country. Apart from fine art, the art of words has an even more profound effect against the argument of “aesthetics over message”. A book, an article, or even a poem does not seek to instill its message, or sell itself through aesthetic appeal, rather from how powerful and moving the combination of words it contains is. One example of such an author is Mr. Li Chengpeng, an author in China who uses his words to directly criticize government policies.
Between such examples as Mr. Ai, and Mr. Li I think it is evident that art is an effective means of civil disobedience. Though the argument will always have opponents who may lack faith in the power of art, the effect of it becomes indisputable after spending time around it. By evoking emotions and driving people to action on a day-to-day basis around the world, art consistently proves itself as a valid form of civil disobedience.
Works Cited
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Andy Schweiter was an English teacher in China for 6 years.
