Azu Nwagbogu: What Happens If Activism And Art Collide?

The art world has changed. In the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, if you walked into a museum or art gallery, you would expect to see mostly the work of Dead White Males (DWM) in the former and Old White Males (OWM) in the latter.

In 2024, we not only expect, but also demand new perspectives and visions from queer and female artists as well as from artists of color and artists from diverse backgrounds that are more representative of contemporary society. This increased diversity has driven engagement — museum and gallery attendance are at all-time highs — but it has also brought to the fore certain recurring issues that had not occurred with such frequency hitherto. It also has a moral hazard of adopting a lazy, reductionist approach to the very vital work of curatorship. An aspect that I am thoroughly concerned with.

As a curator, I believe it is important to meet the artists in their studios. You often find yourself reviewing their work and engaging with them on several levels. First as people, as thinkers, as barometers of society, as torchbearers for beauty and hope, and as moral agents for social change. Not that artists have to be all that, but certainly engaged. It is often disheartening to spend the time, only to learn that the artist identifies as ___, therefore, you need to show their work.

One issue is the collision between activism and art: If activism and art collide, what does this utopia look like? Contemporary art, music, film and fashion have been tasked with having a meaning and a message. This message is currently seen as being synonymous with the agenda of justice as fairness that was first articulated by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. This vision of distributive justice is a political rather than a moral or ethical conception. It seeks to enable desired outcomes which have been determined at the political level, often in recent times by leftist movements touting progressive slogans. Virtue signaling with slogans, however powerful they may be, are not synonymous with virtue in itself. In fact, nothing makes it easier for the worst amongst us to hide, in plain sight, behind these placards.

Consumers — and especially youthful consumers — of art, fashion, film and music generally agree with these slogans, but do they truly understand their implications for the cultural products they consume? Do they truly accept that every fashion, music, cinema or art choice they make as a consumer must adhere to the standards of equality, fairness and social justice they — no doubt genuinely — pursue as social objectives? Climate concerns, migration, gender issues — how to deal with the persistent injustices of the past and how they manifest today are issues of real concern. How do creative artists, consumers and other stakeholders get to a point of mutual understanding and trust in which they can come together to steward progress on these pressing issues without overriding natural rights, such as the right of an artist to share their perspective — no matter how unpopular it is with powerful lobby groups, be they reactionary or ‘woke’?

In this era in which the legacy colonialist gaze has been supplanted by alternative framings that acknowledge the realities of migration and diaspora, and in which formerly marginalized groups have reclaimed their voices and their agency, conflict between divergent artistic and curatorial visions is inevitable. But should the erstwhile DWM and OWM totalitarian vision simply be replaced by a ‘woke’ totalitarian alternative? I believe it should be possible to strive for and achieve an ideal synthesis that embraces the mutually reinforcing reshaping and reimagining of social, cultural, economic and historical narratives across diversity to facilitate enhanced clarity and insight in art, fashion and music.

This means revoking the current ‘hurt feelings’ veto of various identity groups. These vetoes are being used cynically as cudgels with which to suppress creative artists’ liberty, regardless of the moral and ethical rights and wrongs of their causes. To suppress discussion and scream loudly in echo chambers does not bring us closer to the idea of our common humanity.

The fashion, music, film and especially art worlds are currently in foment as a result of these identity-based advocacy wars. In focus is what is often termed the ‘woke’ agenda. The very meaning of the word ‘woke’ is controversial; it could be said that whether one associates the term with the primary definition supplied by Merriam-Webster — “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)” — or the dictionary’s secondary definition, “politically liberal or progressive (as in matters of racial and social justice), especially in a way that is considered unreasonable or extreme,” is an excellent barometer of which side of the barricades separating colonizer from colonized, cisgender from transgender, gay from straight, Black from white, or any of the other fissures that can potentially be widened by injustice or discrimination, one stands. It ignores the liminality in infinite space where most people identify.

In physics, the idea of stirring two immiscible liquids or powders gets to achieve perfect mixing is an interesting metaphor. Incessant stirring eventually leads to demixing, a situation where the two immiscible particles completely separate. We are close to approaching that point in our epoch. What is required are certain lubricants, ligands to help create the bonds that bind the different communities together, and art is that voice. It is the space where we find emotional truths. It must not be censored, controlled and manipulated by the state or the mob.

Irrespective of semantic quibbling, most would agree that extremist woke visions deny the power of visual art and the agency of visual artists. Artistic vision is sufficient in itself to cathartically purge the excessive emotions — the cross currents of pity, contempt, love, hate, fear, dogmatic zeal, envy and sympathetic support — uniting and dividing those at the opposite ends of the fissures separating colonizer from colonized, cisgender from transgender, gay from straight, Black from white. By pushing for blanket suppression and censorship of perspectives they reject, extreme woke activists deny the cathartic power of art. And, by simply censoring certain themes and topics, privileging certain narrative perspectives above others, they deny artistic agency.

One of the objectives of art is to encourage conversations about difficult topics in order, after the exchange of different perspectives, to achieve new clarity and insight. Artist and musician Laurie Anderson was forced to withdraw from a visiting professorship at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen in January 2024, after it became known that she had supported a 2021 petition by Palestinian artists titled “Letter Against Apartheid.” In October 2023, Artforum editor David Velasco was fired for publishing an open letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. In November 2023, Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei’s exhibition at Lisson Gallery in London was put on hold indefinitely after pro-Israel lobby groups objected to tweets he sent that were perceived to be pro-Palestinian. 

By enabling identity-based pressure groups to censor the perspectives of those they oppose, we roll back recent gains — not back to the 1980s and 1990s, but to the 1950s McCarthy era. The formerly marginalized come to understand that their voices will only continue to be heard so long as they collude in the suppression of other, less favored voices — Palestinians today, some other group tomorrow. Culture should be ring fenced from the interference and censorship being attempted by identity-based lobbying groups. Creators — whether in art, fashion, music, film or other fields — must be allowed to do their work without fear of censorship for sharing their perspectives or challenging dominant narratives.

We live in a Culture Wars era in which people are in danger of adopting blinders that make it impossible to even perceive, let alone comprehend, alternative viewpoints. The emotional truth which only creative art can supply is the only antidote to this malady. Whether manifested as visual art, film, fashion or music, art enables a catharsis of pity, fear and other emotions that no newspaper article or television news report can trigger. By allowing echo chambers to develop, particularly as self-selecting online communities proliferate and become ever more intolerant of out-group perspectives, we’re in danger of ceasing to have the conversations that we need to have to stimulate fresh thinking and the exchange of different perspectives.

Art should promote the idea of common humanity, seeing diversity not as a threat, but as a means of fostering interest in different perspectives.

The cardinal sin in the world of culture is that of censorship. We need hyper vigilance, regardless of political persuasion, to create a safe space to enable discourse. Art is that safe space.