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Artwork I’ve Been Thinking About Since The Election
Like many of you, I spent last Wednesday in a daze of fury and disappointment. As I’ve spent the past week recalibrating, checking in with friends, continuing my work in mutual aid, and preparing myself for the oppressive chaos that lies ahead, I found myself refusing despair and channeling that impulse for hopelessness into a productive anger built on love and care for each other.
Over this week, I’ve been turning to art to find moments of beauty, resilience, and resistance through this turbulence. Artists like Ana Mendieta, David Wojnarowicz, Jeffrey Gibson, Wendy Red Star, Sonya Clark, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Christine Sun Kim have lessons for us to learn and stories to tell. Even if these works were not all created in the present moment, the stories of struggle they tell and the lessons of liberation they share address feel especially urgent.
Thornton Dial was born the child of sharecroppers in Alabama, gradually becoming a painter, high construction crew member, pipe fitter and metal worker over the course of his life. In his free time, he began to make complex, bold sculptural assemblages from cloth, wood, and metal scraps he’d find, painting with abstract allegorical brushstrokes that confronted American histories of racial oppression. In his own words: “My art is the evidence of my freedom.” It’s hard not to think about…
