Activism through Art Writing Assignment

What I have seen most from art on the street and searching through the web is the continuous movement of artist protesting against Donald Trump. It still feels surreal that we are living in “Trump land” and having a sense of everything going back to its old ways. Some artists that I have chosen, share some of the same ideas. Even though it’s not entirely done in the same style and not directly about Donald Trump, it’s mainly what trump has brought out of people and their views about race, women and over people. These artist found ways of conveying a message to the people. These artist are Betty Tompkins, Hank Willis Thomas, Eric Gottesman, and Andrea Bowers.

            Betty Tompkins is an American artist who mainly does paintings of individual’s displaying heterosexual and homosexual intimate acts. Her works are well known internationally and has caused controversy during the 1970’s. But one of her latest works was revamped in protest of Trump as our president. The original idea came to mind in 2002 when Tompkins’s sent a message to her mailing list asking for words and phrases that described women. She received more than 3,500 responses in 10 languages, equally split between men and women. The answers became the series “WOMEN Words, Phrases and Stories,” which will eventually include 1,000 individual word paintings. “Heck, People Just Don’t Like Women” is a recent addition.

Tompkins explains the curiosity she had of sending another mass email but having it be answered anonymously, just to see if anything has changed since sending out the original email from 2002. She states

“I was curious if that made a difference. It did. People didn’t just send me a list of words, they told whole stories, which were fascinating and sort of awful to read. And those three words that were repeated in 2002 were repeated again. I thought that was amazing. Basically, this is the way the world thinks about women. The difference now is that we’ve become more sensitive to the words and how they play out in real life. We’ve never seen such an example of plain-old misogyny — as well as embedded misogyny from women — as we did in 2016. You can’t escape the political implication of this piece.”

            I agree what Tompkins says regarding politics being involved in the responses she received for her social experiment in the artwork. Misogyny has reached an all-time high since Trump’s presidency and it’s seen more often now how men view women and how it’s even effected women’s ideas and views as well.

            Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman are the founders of For Freedoms, a New York-based super PAC. They’re commissioned artist that create political ads in the run-up to the 2016 election. “Make America Great Again” was ad installed a few weeks before Election Day. It depicts James ‘Spider’ Martin of unarmed protesters facing off against the Alabama state troopers on March 7, 1965, a day that was known to be Bloody Sunday. This was during the Civil Rights era, the title was intended to show what really made America great is the movement protesting against the injustice and standing up to the government. This stood out in the importance of recent police brutalities that resulted in the death of many innocent victims.

            Even though the intention was to empathize with those men and women, but many people were confused about the sign. At first, they thought it was a right-wing group. A local liberal activist called Gottesman and Thomas after the election and said, “You might think that you’re doing something that’s good and interesting, but for people on the ground here, you’re putting lives at risk. With the uptick in hate crimes since the election, you might be inciting and empowering white supremacists, saying it’s O.K. to go beat up on black people.” The statement befuddled the artists and people thought they were empathizing with the state troopers.

            This next artist uses a creative way of creating her own artwork. Andrea Bowers is an activist/artist, she uses materials from protests like cardboard placards and pithy slogans to relay her message on important issues. “Don’t Touch Me” was created after Trump bragged about sexually assaulted women. His comment lead to Bowen to create a cardboard stating something that is humorous but also straightforward of how she felt about the President. Bowen states

“The election made me more committed than ever to protest art, to figuring out how to step up my game. Maybe I need to be more aggressive and talk directly about the issues. Maybe I don’t need to be so delicate or subtle in the way I talk about my work.”

There’s no mistake that this time in history has inspired and sparked protesters and activist groups to stand against the injustice and the unethical ideas of Donald Trump. This has raised much awareness of the issues that are happening now. These artist are using their tools and talents to protest and bring awareness of the behavior seen with Donald Trump and the rising of White supremacy swirled with misogyny.

References

Protest Art in The Era of Trump