I’ve spent a lot of time filled with paralyzing anxiety when thinking about climate change. Most of the time I feel pretty hopeless about the future — we just aren’t acting fast enough, or coherently enough, to prevent this catastrophe. I also spend a lot of time wondering what I, little old me, can do about it – is there actually anything I can do? I’m not majoring in science, or medicine, or law, or government — I’m an artist. I know that art can “move” people, but I want to move people to action. But can art really move the world?
We know that art is powerful if we just look back on history and all around us; can you think of a single successful political movement where art and visuals were left absent? The term “artivism,” the collaboration of art and activism, was developed in 1997 when a group of East Los Angeles Chicano and Chicana artists gathered....