Check this out from Dakshina.org:
This article is the first in a series looking at systemic, structural problems in the arts community. Nair explores the very real problems of undervaluing artists and their labor, privatization of the arts, and the structural problem of shifting social justice work from the state to artists.
Make Art! Change the World! Starve!: The Fallacy of Art as Social Justice – Part I
by Yasmin Nair
Change, Change, Change
Art has never been too far away from social justice. Artists have, accurately or not, been considered the radical visionaries of society. In recent years, the concept of art as social justice has become prominent in the non-profit and organizing worlds. Everywhere you turn, it seems, there is a mural about community or a hip hop performance about racial harmony. Art is no longer merely to be seen and consumed; it has now become a conscious mechanism in the resistance to neoliberalism, the intense privatization of everyday life that has brought us to this current economic disaster.
I am a writer and activist. My projects focus on issues like comprehensive immigration reform, which I support and the privatization of the public school system, which I oppose. A significant part of my writing appears in left/progressive publications devoted to social justice. A life like mine, which combines my art with social justice, might well be considered the best response to the injustice that pervades the world.
That is one way of looking at it. The truth is the opposite. I am, in fact, neoliberalism’s wet dream come true.
I contend that our current obsession with the amalgamation of art and social justice is no resistance to neoliberalism but a key component of it.
How could this be, you might ask? Surely, you might wonder, there is nothing like the blending of art and social justice to prove that the artist is working consciously to alleviate current conditions of economic and cultural inequality.
Read the entire post here.
Yasmin;
Art projects of the sort that you’ve decried are in fact the opiate of the problem, the fluffy image and illusion of social justice without the substance.
Well done!
Maura