Kimberly Drew said in her memoir This isWhat I Know About Art said, “that art and protest will forever be bound together." The book shows how Drew’s career had turned around after creating Black Contemporary Art. Drew's story helped in discussing about the issue of money and the issue of white guilt. In terms of money, her circumstances were tricky because she wanted to study, but did not have enough money to enter the classroom, so she is forced to take a loan to start her classes and she was also forced to work during her studies in order to get the money she needed. At a young age, she then started her blog in order to educate people about Black artists who was never much talked about in her art classes because in her classes they only talked about white and male artists, and this questioned her as to why? “I saw it happening in my art history classes, and I just had to do something to build a history online,” she says in a response to her blog by taking her very first step into art activism. [Drewpg
21] Drew fought with the idea of
white guilt, which is to recognize the unacquired and unfair racial privileges,
and she worked to fight this idea so that people of color can reach success in
the field of art and reach black artists to complete its story and pride in
African American art. Drew had also discussed about her anger and she
was afraid of her own anger, but using her anger was a positive change in order
to struggle and in order to change the mistake in society and as a form of
power in order to continue her march and to start the movement of protest and
change.
Drew
story struck me because I can also be in her shoes. I am a Hispanic descent, I
am Cuban and Dominican and some people are never most interested into Hispanic arts.
One of the quotes that caught my eye was “I am still at a loss for where I got
the confidence to do so, but I am forever grateful to the version of myself
that said yes. Yes to learning more about Black art. Yes to the things that I knew
I needed to see in the world.” This quote is saying that we often allow fear
and the lack of anyone’s confidence to ruin things in our way of success. We
will always have a fear in the back of our heads because we will always be
thinking of what other people would say or speak about our art if we were to present
something that we are very proud of. If we keep this fear, we could lose something
great. Just like another quote that caught my attention which was Stephen
Duncombe and Steve Lambert’s book “The Art of Activism: Your All-Purpose Guide
to Making the Impossible Possible”, it describes how art can cause effect on
people. "This sublime power of art to circumvent our rational minds and
affect our emotions, bodies, and even spirit, has been recognized for
millennia." [Duncombe & Lambert, 2021]. Art can give people the
strength to express how they feel. A riffle effect happens when people gets
inspired by an artist or from an artwork but by this you suddenly have the
confidence to say or create to something that is controversial.
The exhibition Artistas de
Latinoamérica Sueños y Posibilidades curated by Midori Yoshimoto, is about
representing who you are without shame. Midori is an activist because she
uplifts POC and doesn’t ask for anything in return. Latin artists are given the
opportunity to share their artwork for free. Ray Arcadio has two acrylic
paintings in the exhibition, “Queen of Pop” and “Lisa, Lisa”. The paintings
reflect on how Latin celebrities represent their culture and their communities. Ray
Arcadio was born in the Dominican Republic and he graduated from NJCU in 1991. He
takes pride in his culture and he centers his artwork around his identity.
Arcadio’s artwork is activist simply because he is Dominican and painting other
POC.
REMIX, 2023
Acrylic, Airbrush, foam, board
and wood on canvas, 30 x 40 in
“Icons are the flags we plant to let everyone know we are here but also who we are and where we come from.” REMIX is part of his Messengers series.
This painting wants to grab people's attention because of the hair and how the painting is portrayed as some kind of black royalty.
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