“Youth have always played a very, very important role in social change,” said artist and activist Beth Krensky.
This acknowledgment of the power of youth is part of what inspired Krensky, who is an art education professor and the area head of art teaching at the University of Utah. Under those roles, she worked with students to form the online Youth Activist Art Archive.
What is Activist Art?
“[Activist art is] art that is socially and civically engaged that’s in a place that is publicly accessible,” explained Sydney Porter Williams, a graduate student at the U in the Community-Based Art Education MFA program. Porter Williams was one of the first students to work with Krensky on the YAAA.
Krensky further explained this definition was first outlined by artist Nina Felshin in her 1994 book “But Is It Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism.”
“It encourages engagement so that you’re just not passively absorbing stuff,” Krensky said. “It’s an engaged process. And I prefer to call people participants rather than viewers of art for that reason.”
Why is activist art important? Krensky and Porter Williams both pointed to artists’ ability to create visions of the future and invoke emotions in people.
“They transcend what we see now, and they give a vision for the future, and what it could be,” Porter Williams explained. She talked about art that depicts atrocities happening around the world, which can inspire emotions like anger and might even lead to someone taking action.
“Before we act, we have to envision — and for me, that’s the most important aspect of art,” Krensky said.
Youth Activist Art Archive
“[It’s] a place for people to go — not only to see the incredible art that young people are capable of, but also to get resources so they could facilitate projects like this in their own communities,” Krensky described.
If you visit the YAAA’s webpage, art.utah.edu/yaaa/, you’ll be met with several tabs.
One of these tabs leads you to a submission page, where any artist 26 or younger (the age range the archive defines as “youth”) can submit their art to be reviewed by the YAAA team and potentially featured in the archive. Krensky and Porter Williams both strongly encourage anyone interested to submit their work to the site.
Other tabs will lead to you a list of resources, one for facilitators and one for artists.
“The goal was to have anyone who wanted to do this kind of work, either themselves or to facilitate it, have this resource available to them,” Krensky said.
These resources also help facilitate the engagement and action that the archive hopes to inspire, said Porter Williams. The resources can help anyone interested in this work get started.
The resources include links to books, important activist artists’ work and organizations for artists to check out. Links to books, organizations and activist artists’ work are included in the resources for facilitators, in addition to educational tools and lesson plans.
Of course, there’s also a tab leading to the archive itself.
The Archive
All sorts of art forms exist in the archive, from sculptures and paintings to performances.
“I’m really interested in the teapot piece,” Porter Williams said. “Teapot” is composed of a ceramic teapot with holes in the body, a firearm serving as the pot’s handle and three ceramic cups with holes in the middle. The piece was made by Maggie Adams in 2022 and serves as a commentary on gun violence.
“It’s very visceral for me it’s like, ‘Oh, like I can’t put anything in that without it spilling out,’ and it’s this loss and the spilling out of of life,” Porter Williams said.
Krensky pointed out another piece called “No Place to Call Home” created by Natalie Lim Cheatham in 2020.
“No Place to Call Home represents the clash of the artist’s Korean and American identities. It depicts a Korean hanbok, a traditional cultural dress, made of American flags. As an Korean-American, or any mixed race, you can often feel out of place in both cultures,” reads the piece’s description.
The best art asks questions, Krensky said, and this piece serves as a sort of entry point to greater conversations or ideas about immigration and identity.
The archive currently features 13 works of activist art, but Krensky and Porter Williams are both hoping to see it grow.
“I’d love to see it being a living website,” Porter Williams explained, “where people can take inspiration from the work in the archive and use the resources provided with the archive to make their own, and maybe even submit to the YAAA.”
j.hinds@dailyutahchronicle.com
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