My students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago say that they\u2019re getting tired of political art. It was somewhat surprising to hear at first, but an animated class discussion drove their point home: sometimes, identity politics can submerge the individual beneath layers of racial and gender constructs. After all, these are young adults trying to find themselves during tough times\u2014the aftermath of Trump\u2019s America still tormented by simmering racial tensions and the emotional, financial, and cultural destruction inflicted by a once-in-a-century pandemic. Above their heads hovers the apocalyptic doom of climate change. This generation already had little hope about their future in 2019 when, by comparison, the world seemed a lot less broken. One student said, \u201cPolitical art doesn\u2019t change anything.\u201d Others nodded. Is this the beginning of a post-2020 backlash?<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Political art is no new thing. One can look at Hannah Hoch\u2019s photomontages from the 1920s and 1930s in which she mocked the politicians of the time. It is pioneering work. It\u2019s powerful. But it didn\u2019t stop politicians from becoming more and more corrupt. Picasso\u2019s Guernica<\/em> didn\u2019t stop the Second World War, or all those that followed. Kara Walker\u2019s haunting post-colonial critiques haven\u2019t ended racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But is it fair to expect that art could change the world so radically, instantly, and in measurable ways? Has this ever been the case? Even during the nineteenth century, when painting had little competition from other media, the legendary scandals at the Parisian Salons made people blush and chuckle. Back on the streets, they\u2019d go on with their lives, their wars, their racist behavior, their hypocrisy. But sometimes, they would return to their lives with the image of a painting haunting their minds. An icon, a visual shorthand of morals and values; a metaphor, a handle onto the world that helped them pin down what\u2019s elusive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my experience, Kara Walker\u2019s A Subtlety<\/em>\u2014her 2014 monumental sugar baby\u2014did just that. Despite it being a temporary exhibition, it now lives in my mind as a painful and yet powerful reminder of the not-so-distant racist history of this country and the entwinements of blackness, sweetness, exploitation, and grief upon which it is built. This kind of iconic political art becomes a building block, a steppingstone in the formation of one\u2019s identity. It might not change the world quickly enough for us to notice. The kind of change this art instigates is akin to the shift of tectonic plates and the sedimentations of strata in which fossils form. Although the process is lengthy, the changes it causes are ingrained and long-lasting, indelible and profound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is easy to become tired of the arrogant kind of political art we see today\u2014the kind of art that pretends that swift change is within reach. Great political art speaks of today while remaining timeless; it addresses the local while reaching for universality; it transfigures the mundane into the iconic register of symbolism.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A great example of this kind of political art is Joana Vasconcelos\u2019s Valkyrie Mumbet<\/em>, currently on show at Boston\u2019s MassArt Art Museum. Over the past twenty years, Vasconcelos has generated an incredibly original body of work in which she often examines identity and consumer issues and questions our relationship with history and nature. As far as political art goes, Valkyrie Mumbet <\/em>is at once spectacular, memorable, exhilarating, tragic, and moving. The author of her own artistic mythology, Vasconcelos has over the years produced several Valkyries, gigantic biomorphic sculptural organisms\u2014sometimes ominous; other times benevolent\u2014that hover above the viewer. Valkyries were Norse mythological figures who flew over the battlefields to choose those who might live or die in battle. They had an uncontainable executive power\u2014they defined the course of history. In Vasconcelos\u2019s mythology, each Valkyrie pays tribute to a trailblazing, and often not well known, woman in history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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