Hey y’all, today is the publication date for my book This Is What I Know About Art, which is one of four titles released by the Pocket Change Collective. If you’d like to buy the book for yourself, or a young person in your life, please patronize one of the black-owned book stores linked here.
AND For Teen Vogue, I wrote an Op-Ed about the inextricable links between art and protest.
…art, and more broadly the world of culture, can help us to better see and understand our own subjectivity. At its best, art can be a pathway to worlds far, far away and a compass for making sense of exactly where we are right now.
This week, as protesters across America join forces to say no to police brutality, it is artwork: illustrations, graphics, and portraiture, that help folks to organize, coordinate, and fight back. It’s offerings by artists like Ashley Lukashevsky, Monica Trinidad, Miriam Mosqueda and others that will light up our social media feeds and aid us in saying that we are here and we’ve had enough.
For far too long, people across the globe have suffered due to the direct effects of colonialism, patriarchy, state violence, and so much more, but it is our art and creativity that have helped us to communicate our collective rage. Art has helped us build bridges so that we do not feel alone — and so we can make sure that we do not forget our own history.