Artist Statement
The issues in gender, racial and class injustice are incontrovertible and I’ve spent my life working to address them. As this work is about raising issues and dialogue, both through people’s direct experience and through media, I welcome the opportunity to create platforms for activists to directly express their experience and concerns and to seek ways to work together.
As a political and personal strategy, I am committed to negotiating between differences and seeking actual solutions, but I recognize the value of protest, picketing, petitions and other tactics of real and symbolic value. I would hope that this controversy was causing us to have a substantial conversation about poverty, violence and gender and racial discriminations, but so far I have not seen evidence of real substance in the media.
If this were truly an opportunity to discuss the issues represented by almost 400 activists on the stoops on Saturday I would be extremely pleased. As it stands, it is being fanned into an attack on the very institutions – Creative Time and the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center – who have the potential to represent women’s voices in the art world.
For this I am very sad, as I am at the current state of tactical strategies of those who are all basically on the same side. In the end, however, I believe the art world is relatively small and often more concerned with symbolic rather than actual activism.
I would be sorry if this conversation overshadows the palpable emotional experience for both audience and participants that took place in a Brooklyn neighborhood last Saturday night, thanks to such a remarkable gathering of committed activists. Can we hear more about the substance of these conversations please?
Suzanne Lacy, artist