Art as Resistance

One of my favorite movie lines, from David Mamet’s State of Main, happens when Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character pulls Alec Baldwin’s character out of a car that the latter’s underage girlfriend has just crashed in a small town, and the first thing Baldwin says, blood dripping down his face, with a laugh is, “ So, THAT happened.”

Yes, that happened.

If you feel about this new-but-familiar-but-also-worse situation like I do, then perhaps you too are pulling yourself out of despondency by getting active.

We creatives are now the front lines. The Artists. The Thinkers. The Writers. The Musicians. The Sculptors. The Filmmakers. The ones who dare to express themselves freely and openly. The ones who shine a mirror back at the world.

For inspiration, I did a deep dive on how artists have resisted and protested - in the past and today - against racism, sexism, political oppression, fascism, censorship, and a host of other issues. The list is, of course, endless. Below are several that spoke to me. Maybe they will speak to you too.

Danny Lyon’s photo of John Lewis and Colleagues in prayer before a demonstration at a segregated swimming pool, Cairo, Illinois, 1962

Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” (1937), the artist’s response to the 26 April 1937 bombing of Guernica, a town in the Basque Country in northern Spain, by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Elizabeth Catlett’s “Target” (1970)

A photograph of Breonna Taylor, projected onto the statue of Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va., July 2020

Banksy’s “Devolved Parliament” 2009

Kastuś Suprac, an artist from Belarus

Barbara Kruger’s “Untitled (Your Body Is a Battleground)” (1989)

I look at the world

By Langston Hughes

I look at the world

From awakening eyes in a black face—

And this is what I see:

This fenced-off narrow space

Assigned to me.

I look then at the silly walls

Through dark eyes in a dark face—

And this is what I know:

That all these walls oppression builds

Will have to go!

I look at my own body

With eyes no longer blind—

And I see that my own hands can make

The world that's in my mind.

Then let us hurry, comrades,

The road to find.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/101581/poems-of-protest-resistance-and-empowerment

Words by Shady Habash, from his last letter (in Tora prison, Cairo, October 26th 2019) Spoken and composed by Ramy Essam

poster for “I Am Not Your Negro” a documentary by Raoul Peck

“Springtime for Hitler and Germany” from Mel Brooks’ brilliant satire The Producers (the 2005 version, not 1967 original)

Street art in Lyons, France originally miscredited to Banksy (it’s not Banksy)

Time go get busy, y’all.

With love.