Artists Are Embracing the Power of Refusal, Billy Anania, Hyperallergic
Today, cultural institutions leech onto revolutionary movements while making grand public statements about social justice, particularly after the largest anti-police uprising in a decade. Compare this to Occupy, when museums were silent on their affiliations with white-collar criminals like the Koch and Sackler families. Rather than make any material change, they sought to absorb protest art, just as in summer 2020. But artists are now hyper-aware of the contradictions pervading the nonprofit-industrial complex, leading to mass withdrawals from corporate biennials and a resurgent culture of exposing institutional decadence. The art that has propelled political unrest at every stage, as it has since the dawn of civilization, loses its edge the moment it enters a vitrine. As COVID-19 withers away the veneer of capitalist society, artists are once again embracing the power of refusal.
… i have been having my own revolt and protest, mild as it is, considering, how do i refuse the capitalist art complex which serves the artist so poorly?… it’s a somewhat laughable question, because, by and large, that complex has only allowed me at its periphery… so my protest is of necessity a minimal impact on the system and myself… still, in the spirit of the Classical Greek concept of Excellence and the Buddhist Eight Fold Path, i wander at the edges wondering what to do with my compulsion to make photographs?…
… my art itself is not protest… my desire to make it and share it outside the complex perhaps is… my own small refusal…
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