A Call to Create & Resource the Future We Deserve

While making my way to the inaugural Global Artivism Conference in Pretoria, South Africa, I started reading “What Happened Miss Simone”, a biography of Nina Simone, the revolutionary and distinguished musician behind a vast catalog of music. Moving through the pages of this book that detailed Simone's path from a classical pianist to dedicating her music and platform to the political struggle and movement for Black liberation and human dignity was the perfect introduction to the space I was about to enter. 

Over 500 people from around the globe convened at the Tshwane University of Technology for the inaugural Global Artivism Conference. An almost overwhelming sense of belonging consumed me as I mingled with folks from Ethiopia, Colombia, India, Germany, Mexico, Botswana, South Africa, Palestine, the UK, and others who decided to enter into this new space to find community, add inspiration, and ultimately, help shape the future of the event. 

In an era of colliding crises, political upheaval, and social isolation, it can be easy to feel apathetic and hopeless. But to hold the thick conference program in my hands and to read through presentations, proposals, and performances by hundreds of people saying, “Not so fast, we aren’t going down without a fight”, I found these individuals seemed to offer, through their art, an antidote to apathy and hopelessness. Defined as the intersection of arts and culture and activism, artivism gives a name to the long history of countless artists who have approached their work as a reflection of the times and a way to process, motivate, call attention to, and inspire cultural and societal shifts.  

Immediately, a tone of possibility and exploration was set with opening remarks by Nalini Moodley-Diar, a gorgeous welcome by Louisa Zonda, and an invitation to radically imagine the future we want from Favianna Rodriguez. “It's gotta be right, it's gotta be good, it's gotta be nice. I do this for you, stay shining. Everybody stay shining” Stay Shining by Riky Rick, the late son of conference organizers Kumi Naidoo and Lousia Zonda, played as conference participants danced out of the room and toward the vigorous programming of the next three days. 

Spanning several conference rooms, stages, exhibit halls, and outdoor spaces, presenters provided multiple modalities for engagement. In “Embroidering an Intersectional Future Through Community, Radical Imagination, and Solidarity” NYC-based Afro-Colombian artist Laiyonelth Hurtado, invited us to add stitches to the patchwork that has been traveling around the world while he educated us on the exploitation of garment workers. While we stitched, Laiyonelth asked us to share our visions for the future as the connection we wove became palpable.  With Vuyokazi Futshane, a pan-Africanist, an intersectional black feminist, and a development activist, we journeyed through the art and music that was produced in pre and post-apartheid South Africa in “Art as Resistance Across Eras: Examining Multi-Art Expressions in Pre- and Post- Apartheid South Africa”. A playlist accompanied Futshane’s intriguing history lesson on the music and art that moved through the people of South Africa during that period. 

Embroidering an Intersectional Future Through Community, Radical Imagination, and Solidarity” NYC-based Afro-Colombian artist Laiyonelth Hurtado,

Jessica Foli “Transforming Public Spaces: The Artistic Activism of the Pussy Squad and “The Pussy Gospel” used the semblance of the Black/African church’s invocation, music, and rhetoric to discuss the reclamation of Black woman and selfhood and gender-based violence. Running Waters detailed the water crisis in Hammanskraal through a play, Tareq Aljundi invited us to dance and sing in Arabic to the enchanting music of the oud, and Katlego Kai Kolanyane-Kesupile explored the art, archive, and the self. 

Nina Simone offered, “We will shape and mold this country, or it will not be shaped and molded at all anymore. So I don’t think you have a choice. How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?” Artists – dancers, writers, painters, sculptors, photographers, storytellers, musicians, and others – have always taken it upon themselves to create multiapproach opportunities for people to engage with, consider, and question the society they live in. Artivists brilliantly compel us to reckon with the reality of the painful parts of the world while extending an invitation to resist and reimagine it. 

Art is so ubiquitous to culture and society that we sometimes need to be reminded that it’s there and that it needs our attention to survive. It reminds me of how I sometimes forget to drink water while in a body of water. A significant part of shifting political, social, and structural systems is acknowledging that we indeed live in and are embedded in the systems we seek to change. It’s our existence within these systems that position us as necessary agitators. Artivists are daring to make the revolution, resistance, and movement toward a just and liberatory world accessible and possible. 

Philanthropy has and continues to benefit from the artivist movement. A standout example of this is the conception of the Art for Justice Fund, started by philanthropist Agnes Gund with Darren Walker at the Ford Foundation. Gund started the fund, focusing on the transformation of the criminal legal system, after reading Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow,  Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, and watching Ava DuVernay’s 13th documentary. Tellingly, the initial investment for the fund came from the 100+ million dollars Gund received from selling the painting Masterpiece by Roy Lichtenstein. 

Philanthropic institutions have a long history of spotlighting and platforming the art that comes from cultural movements – the 2020 uprisings, the pushback to the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Civil Rights Movement, and countless other moments that have led to a shift in the mainstream consciousness. Philanthropy, no matter how you look at it, is tethered to the art world. As a holder, funder, recipient, consumer, and mimicker, the field is well aware of the benefits of art - and it is time for it to be funded accordingly.

So what role does philanthropy have in contributing to this ecosystem it benefits from? For the foundations, donors, and individuals who purport to want a just and equitable society, they must move abundant and long-term financial capital for artivists to have financial stability, and permanent cultural spaces, and amplify the role art has in transforming and maintaining society and culture. 

As climate, economic, health, and other crises increase alongside growing apathy and hopelessness, so does the need for artivists and the movement to convene them to be boldly funded to translate and engage those who are looking to find their role in creating an equitable and just world. It’s time for philanthropy to stand beside the artivists who are boldly saying, “Not so fast, we aren’t going down without a fight.” 

For more information and to get involved check out the Global Artivism and Riky Rick Foundation websites.