Art: A tool against Racism
- Clark Ramanantsoa
- Oct 19, 2020
- 2 min read
2020 is a year marked by successive woeful events. How many of us are not aware of the tragic death, or to be accurate, the murder of George Floyd, the recent killing of Breonna Taylor which outlines racial aggression towards a police, the slaughter of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Besides, Asians were highly discriminated because of the Covid-19 pandemic and "Anti-Asians" sentiment has been spread rapidly.
July 13th, 2013, the #BlackLivesMatter movement is born (Knox and Herbert 2020). From a simple hashtag to a movement, it all started when George Zimmerman who assassinated Trayvon Martin, was acquitted. Alicia Garza, Patriss Cullors and Opal Tometi created the hashtag on Facebook for the first time to prone the value, the validity and the importance of Black People's lives and fight against racism (Knox and Herbert 2020).
Seven years later, the movement reappeared when a Black man was kneeled down and then killed by four polices in Minneapolis last May 25th (Cobb 2020).
Artists, Art and Racism
Different artworks inspired from the #BlackLivesMatter have been compiled. Artists stated that through art, they are able to 'Stand Our Ground' and "Address social issue like this (racism) publicly" (Tes One as cited by Fogg 2016). For some other artists, drawings allowed them to capture the moment, a moment to be remembered: how black people were treated, illustrate how the society reacted on an event as such, shot all the different emotions, feelings and facial expression showed by all the protestants (Fogg 2016).
"I have been an activist for decades, but I know that my art speaks much more loudly than I ever could."
'Art Against Racism: Memorial. Monument. Movement', an Initiative of Rhinold Ponder
Following the death of George Floyd, Rhinold Ponder, an artist himself, has founded the 'Art Against Racism: Memorial. Monument. Movement.' (Hersh 2020)
It is essentially an exposition and projection of a "groundbreaking video platform" which target expert artists but also everyone who wishes to express themselves through art and contribute through artistic manner (Hersh 2020). Different
themes related to the movement will be presented such as: racism, victims of racism, the impact of systematic racism, violence, civil rights, human rights, injustice and many others. Participants can vary the form of their works from sculptures,
culinary art, music, paintings, crafts and in any other form they like (Hersh 2020).
Although the deadline to post video for the Oct. 3 exposition is closed, people can still participate and share their works via the following link: https://sites.rutgers.edu/mmm/ and will be presented on the inauguration of the project on January 20, 2021(Hersh 2020)
References:
Cobb, Jelani. 2020. “The Death of George Floyd in context”. The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-death-of-george-floyd-in-context
Fogg, Victoria. 2016. “The most powerful art from the #BlackLivesMatter movement, three years in”. The Washington Post June 13, 2016.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/07/13/the-most-powerful-art-from-the-blacklivesmatter-movement-three-years-in/
Hersh, Pam. 2020. “LOOSE ENDS 9/11: Rhinold Ponder, artist and founder of ‘Art Against Racism’”. Centraljersey.com. https://centraljersey.com/2020/09/09/loose-ends-9-11-rhinold-ponder-artist-and-founder-of-art-against-racism/
Knox, Patrick and Herbert Tom. 2020. “Fight against Racism. What is Black Lives Matter and How did it start?”. The Sun. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3261117/black-lives-matter-what-is-how-start/
Comments