How Important is Art as a Form of Protest?
New York City — This is the million $$$ question everyone in the Art world seems to be asking right now. From Frieze Protest Issue (out now and available here) to Banksy’s Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem, art as protest is a topic hotter than ever right now. Especially in the USA.
So hot and contemporary, especially after Trump’s election, that the New York Times has recently published an article entitled Protest Art in the Era of Trump. And this must count for something.
Within this current heated political climate, the newly launched Peanut Gallery is about to present REACT, a pop-up exhibition featuring painting, video, photography, sculpture, street art, and mixed-media works by eight inspiring artists reacting to some of the vexing issues that underlie US social and political divisiveness. Carlos Aires, Eugenio Merino, Mary Mihelic, Marilyn Minter, thrashbird, Pete Voelker, Ernest Withers, and t.Rutt (Mary Mihelic and David Gleeson’s artist collective) speak with powerful voices about immigration, the environment, corporate greed, social inequality, and their new President. Their works invoke nostalgia, anger, satire, humour, anxiety, and some combustible energy in reflecting how and why US society has reached its current situation and the new directions it might go from where they stand.
REACT is a celebration of the right to freedom of expression. Of all the voices there are to be heard, we understand that REACT gives visibility to just a few. So whether you are cheering or throwing peanuts at what these voices have to say, we encourage you to bring your own voice and share your REACTIONS.
When: REACT will be on view from April 7 through April 17, 2017♦ Where: at 240 East 4th Street, New York City
♦ The Peanut Gallery will hold an opening reception on Thursday, April 6 from 7 to 10 p.m. with a performance by t.Rutt.
About The Peanut Gallery
The Peanut Gallery produces unique thematic pop-up exhibitions that are designed to engage a larger art community with meaningful talent and relevant art. The gallery eschews the curatorial structure of conventional galleries by organising exhibitions around subjects of popular interest reflected in the works of both emerging and established artists. The pop-up exhibitions, together with the Virtual Peanut Gallery, provide a physical and online platform for artists to reach a new audience and for our audience to reach a new awareness.
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All pics courtesy of The Peanut Gallery
‘I don’t think it’s a given that art is a form of protest, but every creative protest is a form of art.’ – Ahmet Ögüt
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