If you know me, you probably already knew I was gonna take a “social justice-y” approach to answering this question but, I do think it’s important to remember those who came before us and honor their ways. Soooo, enjoy!!
There’s a saying that goes something like, “Art imitates life.” But I think that sometimes art doesn’t just imitate life, it magnifies what’s really going on in life, critiques how to make this life better, and also heals the wounds caused by life too.
Over time, art has increasingly been given more importance, which makes me ecstatic that people are finally appreciating it, but sometimes it’s placed on too high of a pedestal. We often think of art as sometime separate from us, something separate from “real life.” Maybe it’s a Shakespearean sonnet or a Monet painting in a museum. Whatever it may be, we fail to realize that art doesn’t need to be something outside of us, something requiring perfection, but more so something that merely tells our story in a different manner. History tells a different story of the beautiful, serene, and perfect art we’re used to. Throughout history, art is not just a bystander, separate from life, but a catalyst, helper in life. While this may sound cliché, art really truly does do what words sometimes fail to document. Specifically, art has shaped movements, protests, and honestly just change throughout history.
My favorite example of this would be through the graffiti painted onto the Berlin Wall. Street artists had turned this gray cement wall of oppression into a collective collage of color, painting different meanings onto it. This art was there before and after the wall crumbled, as it chipped away at the wall both metaphorically and physically as it incited hope in the people to eventually take it down. Even today, remnants of that graffiti are still there and we can learn that art was a means for people to reclaim space through creativity.
The phrase, “Wer mauert, hat’s notïg” painted onto the Berlin Wall. It describes the irony of a situation where a barrier is built and justified as a means “necessary” for protection through separation when in reality, the need and building of a wall is what causes the separation in the first place. This phrase directly translates to, “whoever builds a wall, needs it.”
A more recent example seen of this is through the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Murals started to appear throughout streets and buildings. Names, faces, and phrases like “Say their Names” became important forms of visual and auditory mantras that expressed the purpose of this movement. Like the past, art once again transformed grief into solidarity and made injustice visible in ways that statistics and headlines often desensitize us to. This art spoke not just in the moment of those protests, but beyond it to the hope we can all have that we still have the power to build the kind of world we want.
A makeshift memorial built for George Floyd near the spot where he died in custody of the Minneapolis police. As you can see, it has a painted mural along with flowers, signs, and balloons left to honor him.
I feel that these moments really prove that art doesn’t just reflect reality, but reshapes it. Art isn’t something higher than us, something better than us, but art is born from real, lived experiences, from injustice and joy. Remember that art isn’t just to witness, but to respond. Art has never been something passive, no, in fact it always asks something of us.
Right now, in a world full of uncertain times (I bet you hear that phrase every other day!), we need this reminder that art imitates life more than ever. We need to pay attention not just to art that is popular and loud and urgent but also to art that is quietly subversive, beautiful, and true. While art does have the power to challenge us to imagine and do better, this can only be done if we are willing to look and listen closely.
So, I hope you’ve realized that you need to pay attention. Pay attention to the murals on your drive to work (there’s so many in Detroit), the poetry posted in random corners of the internet (like maybe blogs of your fellow classmates), or even graffiti painted onto the walls of important buildings (perhaps on one of the walls of your school?). The ways people resist invisibility is through art, so art is always needed to make change. Art is not optional and something that we can choose to spend time on and incorporate into our lives. Instead, art actually moves us but also asks us to move and finally act upon life.
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