This is WESA Arts, a weekly newsletter by Bill O'Driscoll providing in-depth reporting about the Pittsburgh area art scene. Sign up here to get it every Wednesday afternoon.
Democracy these days seldom feels artful. But a series of shows collectively titled “The Art of Democracy” aims to show how art can help us practice this imperfect, battered — and even imperiled — form of governance.
The exhibits, organized by Casey Droege Cultural Productions and Keystone Progress Education Fund, began rolling out in September. “The Art of Democracy: Whose Choice?,” a show about reproductive freedom at PennWest California, was followed by “The Art of Democracy: Resiliency Impacted,” which explored the impacts of gun violence, at a gallery in Indiana, Pa.
The final installment opened last week at Brew House Arts on the South Side. Titled simply “The Art of Democracy,” it’s meant to demonstrate, across a range of issues, how local artists are “harnessing collective power to move us toward a more just and liberated world.”
At the opening reception, Keystone Progress executive director Laura Nevitt said she’s found that political discussions go better in an art environment, where free expression is already on display. She added, “I fundamentally believe art is political anyway.” (High-profile battles over public monuments including Pittsburgh’s Columbus statue, not to mention book bans, suggest she’s on to something.)
It’s true that art with an explicit political message is viewed skeptically by some. Some viewers, after all, might just want to see something beautiful (as though the choice of subject matter, and how to render it, is somehow not a social act — that is, a political one). On the other hand, to avoid being misunderstood, some political artists also avoid things like irony, ambivalence and nuance.
But that’s mostly not the case in this Brew House show, where art and activism blend thoughtfully.
Take the multiple wall-mounted cloth banners created by etta cetera. All were originally made for marches and demonstrations. But while some are pretty direct (“Trans Lives Matter”), others are thought-provoking (“Without Justice There Can Be No Love”) and even funny (“Persistence is Fertile”). And while no message worth its salt is guaranteed to find a home in the heart of every possible viewer, cetera’s “To Change Everything We Need Everyone” might be as ecumenical as it gets.
Likewise with Penny Mateer’s hand-sewn and “VOTE” yard signs, complete with wire frame, and free for the nonpartisan taking.
While the mission of Keystone Progress is to promote progressive values and policies, works in “Art of Democracy,” curated by Brew House Arts executive director Natalie Sweet, mostly coalesce around environmental concerns and reproductive rights.
Tony Cavalline’s “Their World” scatters on a section of wall 422 one-inch circles cut from topographic paper maps of Pennsylvania forests, approximating how many trees stand per earthling. According to a 2015 study, that’s half as many as there were when human civilization began. Viewers see themselves in the installation’s single tiny mirrored disc — literally reflected, outnumbered and implicated.
That’s one way art at the edge of activism can help us visualize urgent issues.
Another is offered by the Pittsburgh-based but continent-wide Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative in selections from its series “Protectors: Saving Biodiversity in the Age of Extinction.” The 12 beautiful silkscreened posters spotlight people around the country fighting for biodiversity.
And quite close to home, Aaron Henderson documents the aftermath of the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, with photographs all the more powerful for being devoid of humans.
This is art as education and persuasion (or vice versa).
The Black Unicorn Library and Archive Project takes the “education” part literally, offering a small library of volumes of alternative social history, from W.E.B. DuBois’ “Black Reconstruction in America” and Franz Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth” to Malaika Jabali’s “It’s Not You, It’s Capitalism.”
Another traditional function of art is generating empathy. Lena Chen’s “We Lived in the Gap Between the Stories” displays handwritten thank you letters to abortion workers. “I’m her best friend,” begins one. “You were there for her, lovingly and without judgement.” (Visitors can write their own letters, which will be mailed to abortion workers.)
Some works imagine new futures. Chris Ivey’s culturally specific “CAPE” is a seven-minute projected video with two layers of slow-motion footage depicting Africans playing in the surf. In voiceover, a man ponders why his fellow Africans are poor, and argues it’s because they’ve abandoned their spiritual roots to live like white people. He concludes, “We need to revive that spirit of African prophets.”
The sense of a need for spiritual renewal also pervades Ashley Cecil’s “Flag of Matriotism” series, whose small banners suggest symbols of nature and our common humanity as alternatives to the implicitly patriarchal, border-bound sensibilities of national flags. Cecil also asks visitors to take a “Poll of Allegiance,” writing on index cards “to what or whom you pledge your allegiance.”
“Art, nature, + the building of community,” reads one response.
It’s a secret ballot, of sorts.
