“South Africa’s anti-apartheid photographers did not merely record brutality. They preserved evidence, built collective memory, and transformed the camera into a weapon of political education and international solidarity.”
“Langston Hughes’ words sent chills down my spine. It gave me the wherewithal to truly understand that fascism is not at all a foreign term, nor is it strictly related to Europe or even novel in twenty-first century American life.”
“I might add that portraiture is also a tender art. It tries to hold onto what can’t be contained, which is life itself and a clear view of it.”
“Spirits return because something in the social fabric was left unfinished—an unacknowledged injustice, a normalized cruelty, a promise broken within a rigid order that leaves little room for repair.”
“Although he personally describes his art as Afro-realism, when we look at it with historical circumspection, we will be more attuned to link it to the larger zeitgeist of a slew of known and unknown artists operating presently in the Internet and social media spaces, so that it almost feels like a movement.”
“And now, one year later, I would walk into an arrivals hall at Damascus airport filled with Syrian families crying and hugging separated sons, now-married daughters, and children that have never seen their homeland. So many tears.”
Korean social movements are repurposing the tradition of minjung-gayo (people’s music) by creatively incorporating K-pop and messages about women’s struggles today.
Eighty years after the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War, we remember how artists from China to Mexico have used art as a practice of solidarity and a tool for revolutionary social transformation.
Duncanson’s skill established him not only in this county, but in England and throughout Europe as America’s first internationally renowned African American artist.
His art was “One small way to express my love for peace and hatred for war … is to do what I can for any victims of aggression, wherever they may be.”
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