Social Practice Art
#socialpracticeart #sociallyengagedart #activistart #communityart #socialjusticeart #socialactionart #socialturn
Social Practice Art is collaborative, often involving people as the medium or material of the work. It confronts social injustice, environmental debasement, or inequitable systems and institutions.
Indeed, Tom Finkelpearl, the author of What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation, defines social practice art as “art that’s socially engaged, where the social interaction is at some level the art.”
Socially engaged art endeavors to influence positive impact. It might be that this category of art actively engages the community through the process of creating an artwork - perhaps a mosaic or a mural - an activity of involvement that deepens understanding about and appreciation for complex, evolving societal issues. Or, it might be that a given artwork, through its spatial organization or subject matter or color and brushwork (or all of the above) creates an emotionally charged experience that stirs viewers. Art opens the possibility of a multi-facted connection (cognitive, emotional, spiritual) and has the potential to raise awareness, encourage conversation, and enable positive change.
In 2020, a worker-led collective based in New York City called Galleries Commit was formed to pursue a climate-conscious, resilient, and equitable future for New York City galleries. Its sister organization, Artists Commit, is a loosely organized collective of artists that provides tools and resources to support artists through the impact of their art and how it travels through the art world.
In the 1960s, social change was amplified by and various styles and movements, for example, Pop Art, Minimalism, and Feminist Art. And, well before that, in the 19th century, J.M.W. Turner increasingly painted scenes that reflected what he observed - the effects on the environment and society of industrialization and social inequity. Turner’s painting Slave Ship depicts actions taken by the captain of the Zong who filed a claim for loss after heaving into the sea gravely ill enslaved people - who were being transported as insured cargo. A widely publicized legal dispute ensued when the insurer refused to pay.
Illuminating the horrors of the Middle Passage, Slave Ship catalyzed the abolitionist movement.
Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On), J.M.W. Turner, 1840
This fall, here in Keene, New Hampshire, community leaders Craig Stockwell, Joan Hanley, and Michelle Aldredge will launch an initiative to support art activism in our corner of Northern New England.
The organizing committee recently selected Roz Crews of North Adams, Massachusetts, to begin a 4-week pilot program for Keene’s Residency in Social Practice Art.
This residency emerged from work led by Arts Alive! and planning for the Keene Art Core and is designed to bring accomplished social practice artists to Keene to work with and within the community to create opportunities for engaged participation, reflection and the making of art.
The presence in Keene of the Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies and Genocide Studies at Keene State College and the Jonathan Daniels Center for Social Responsibility will serve as referents for efforts to engage the social action possibilities of art.
Roz Crews, a well-known Social Practice artist, arrives in Keene on October 1, 2022.
She says:
I am an artist, educator, and writer whose practice explores the many ways that people around me exist in relationship to one another. Recent projects have examined the complex nuance of developing and maintaining relationships in a public elementary school, dominant strategies and methods of research enforced by academic institutions, schemes and scams of capitalism, and the ways authorship and labor are discussed in art communities.