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Selected Projects 2016-18
and social issues through an exhibition featuring the
art of sexual violence survivors. Through this exhibition
process, I saw firsthand the power that art has
to convey powerful messages. I have seen this again
in the current political climate. As the University of
Massachusetts has a respected art college and a
strong sense of civic and community engagement, it
seems appropriate to conduct research on the topic
of art as activism and the role of the artist as an
activist. In what follows, I provide a summary of my
research, which was supported by a generous fund
from the OUR, granted to me in Spring 2017.
2016 was a year of rising socio-political tensions,
which the election only seemed to bring to a boiling
point. Between the Dakota Access Pipeline, Flint,
Michigan, still in need of clean water, arguments of
religious freedom and gay rights, the disenchantment
of the working class, and the ever-growing
list of innocent Black Americans killed at the hands
of police—everyone seemed in agreement that
something had to give, but few agreed on what. The
country held its breath as election results trickled
in and collectively exhaled, some in relief and some
in shock, when Mr. Trump became President Trump.
In all this unrest and apprehensiveness, art found
itself in the center of the conversation.
Art worked to facilitate debate and convey
messages, and it varied as much as the issues
it attempted to address. It was seen on protest
signs, in art museums, and on the internet. However,
the common thread appeared to be that the
art made use of appropriation and irony to convey
its messages; it referenced images and messages
of the oppressor, in part to illuminate the wrongs
and in part to reclaim the very same images. Saint
Hoax’s Make America Misogynistic Again is a
prime example in this vein.
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Left: Andy Warhol’s “Vote McGovern.” Courtesy of MOMA. © 2018
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York. Screen-shot taken from
www.moma.org/collection/works/68705
I was most interested in the protest images that
came out of the election and inauguration. My
OUR funded research consisted of two parts: (1) a
research paper that examined this political art and
attempted to place it in a broader historical context;
(2) an exhibition of local artists’ works regarding the