Activist Art Quotes

Art and activism can be symbiotic. They don't have to be, of course; they can also be contradictory.

For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism. It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.

I was 100 percent political in the '80s - the first time around, let's call it, my first life as an artist.

I feel like being an artist and being an activist are separate things; I know some people who feel very differently.

Art is activism.

Artists look at the environment, and the best artists correctly diagnose the problem. I'm not saying artists can't be leaders, but that's not the job of art, to lead. Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Harry Belafonte - there are artists all through history who have become leaders, but that was already in them, nothing to do with their art.

I helped found Artists for New South Africa, but it used to be called Artists for Free South Africa. Alfre Woodard and a bunch of us started this.

I consider myself an 'actorvist.' When I say that, what I mean is that I use my art to inform my activism and to be my activism sometimes, but I also use my activism in my art.

I write some art criticism, and one thing that's clear to me is that politics is fashionable in the American art world in a way it maybe isn't in American fiction. Your work of art becomes fashionable the moment it has some kind of political commentary. I think this has its dangers - the equation between fashion, politics, and art is problematic for obvious reasons. Nonetheless, the notion of politics as being de rigueur in the world of fiction is almost unthinkable. In fiction in America at the moment, the escape into whimsy is far more prevalent than the political.

Like art, political action gives shape and expression to the things we fear as well as to those we desire. It is a creative process, drawing on the power to imagine as well as to act.

If my work is on the stage, you can be rested assured I'm going to make use of it as a platform for activism as much as possible.

art is not advocacy and advocacy is not art.

Art forms that appeal to [leftists] tend to focus on ... defeat and despair ... as if there were no hope of accomplishing anything through rational calculation.

The truth is that a lot of plays aren't political at all. In American theater history, political theater has tended to crop up when there's a crisis, a national crisis.

I see so many activists... who are artists because they feel that they have the power of communication.

I'm in this band to give volume to various struggles throughout the world. To me, the tension in this band is a minimal sacrifice.

All political art is bad – all good art is political.

I'm trying to be an activist, and I think of that as separate from my work as an artist. But it isn't.

If you have the opportunity for your art to meet activism, you shouldn't pass that up when it comes your way.

My art gets called political, as opposed to my intending it to be political. I think that's something that happens with black artists or marginalized voices trying to speak truth. Because there are things in the status quo to speak out against, speaking out against them will inherently be political.

With Pussy Riot - this was a prank! It was a brilliant, artistically gifted prank. But they didn't expect to go to prison! They were college girls who became political prisoners for two years. That makes them very similar to the people who were "just going to a protest one day" and got arrested. They had no idea they were risking the rest of their lives. Because you're never the same after you've spent two years in a gulag.