Public Art + Dissent: Art, Protest, and Public Spaces.
An NCTA Mini-course for K-12 Educators
Public Art + Dissent: Art, Protest and Public Spaces” was an online mini-course for K-12 educators held over the course of three days, November 9, 11, and 13, 2020. In this Pitt NCTA/Global Studies Center collaboration, speakers discussed how protest artists use public spaces to engage in dialogues with their public as well as other artists around the world. Recent and contemporary public art examples from around the world were showcased to demonstrate ways in which public art transcends national boundaries and is used for protest, dissent, and commentary on political, social, and cultural issues. Topics included the works of Ai Weiwei, Yayoi Kusuma, street artists in Bogota, Columbia, Loyalist murals from Northern Ireland, and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Monday, November 9th
Visual Noise: Street Art in Activism and Placemaking in Bogotá Colombia
Dr. Caitlin Bruce, Department of Communications
Presentation Video
Public art has long been an important part of social justice practice. As a means of educating, shaping public feelings, highlighting issues of collective importance, and offering imaginative resources for creating different worlds, art is a rich communicative resource. In this presentation, Dr. Bruce offers a brief overview of some of the ways in which graffiti and muralism have served as a mechanism for collective voice, and then discuss the case of Bogotá, Colombia. In Bogotá graffiti, street art, and muralism—“arte urbano”—are one means to explore and critique ongoing issues of transitional justice. In particular, this presentation takes up the phenomenon of graffiti tours in Bogotá. It argues that two tours in particular: Grafficable and Bogota Graffiti Tour illuminate two challenges in using art as a mechanism for social justice: aestheticization, and context.
Materials and Resources for Dr. Bruce's Talk
PDF - "The Meanings of Graffiti and Municipal Administration" by Mark Halsey
PDF - "Graffiti Takes its own Space" by Gabriel Ortiz van Meerbeke & Bjørn Sletto
Speaker Information
Caitlin Bruce is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communications at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research is in the area of visual studies, affect studies, and critical theory. She is currently investigating the relationships between public art in urban spaces in transition within a transnational milieu. Largely focusing on graffiti and muralism, Bruce argues that such public art creates spaces for encounter between different publics, and between publics and central, peripheral, or marginal spaces. Her research takes her to Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, Paris, Perpignan, León Guanajuato, and Mexico City. She is currently working on a manuscript on transnational public art. Caitlin is this year’s Global Academic Partnership fellow through the Global Studies Center.
Ai Weiwei: Art Shall Liberate the World
Eric Shiner, Executive Director of Pioneer Works
Presentation Video
Perhaps no other artist working today is as important as Ai Weiwei in terms of commitment to affecting actual change in the global political and social realities of our age. Working across myriad media, and with a special emphasis on high-impact and broadly democratic public art, Ai Weiwei has become a critical voice in activist and social justice-centric art making over the course of his entire career. This talk examins not only works of art made by Ai Weiwei, but also look at his role as a major force of positive societal change and how governments and institutions have navigated his powerful voice.
Materials and Resources for Mr. Shiner's Talk
Presentation Slides PDF - Turning the Lens onto Oppression: Ai Weiwei as Freedom Fighter
Speaker Information
Eric Shiner, Executive Director of Pioneer Works, brings with him a range of great experience to help bring Pioneer Works to the next level. From 2011-2016, he was the Director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, after serving as the Milton Fine Curator of Art at the museum beginning in 2008. He was most recently the Artistic Director at White Cube Gallery here in New York. Prior to that he served as the Senior Vice President of Contemporary Art at Sotheby's. Throughout these experiences, Eric has demonstrated his commitment to lead in ways that promote diversity, inclusion and social justice.
Wednesday, November 11th
Kusama Yayoi: Radical Performance as a Means of Self-Preservation and Social Critique
Eric Shiner, Executive Director of Pioneer Works
Presentation Video
Now one of the “most important living artists” as deemed as such by the global capitalist art market, Kusama Yayoi enjoys top-tier status as a successful contemporary artist. However, this certainly was not always the case, as she spent decades in obscurity after an early bout with fame during her time lived in NYC (1957-1972) as a well-regarded and relevant artist. Public art in the form of “happenings” was a major tenet of her early art-making, and also served as precursor to later, large-scale public installations and sculptures that highlight her characteristic dots and replication of objects. This talk explores how Kusama’s obsession with form and repetition found its start in performance meant to perpetrate society in radical gestures aimed at changing the status quo.
Materials and Resources for Mr. Shiner's Talk
Presentation Slides PDF - Radical Obsession: Kusama Yayoi and the Art of Protest
Speaker Information
Eric Shiner, Executive Director of Pioneer Works, brings with him a range of great experience to help bring Pioneer Works to the next level. From 2011-2016, he was the Director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, after serving as the Milton Fine Curator of Art at the museum beginning in 2008. He was most recently the Artistic Director at White Cube Gallery here in New York. Prior to that he served as the Senior Vice President of Contemporary Art at Sotheby's. Throughout these experiences, Eric has demonstrated his commitment to lead in ways that promote diversity, inclusion and social justice.
Loyalty in Dissent: Loyalist Public Murals in Pre- and Post-Ceasefire Northern Ireland
Erin Hinson, Vice President of Research Development at Abbey Research
Presentation Video
This talk explores the complex and multi-faceted identity politics of loyalists in Northern Ireland. The presentation examines how these politics are visualized, contested, and interrogated through the use of public mural displays. Loyalism in Northern Ireland is an intriguing construct – born of centuries of conflict and dissent around the intersections of religion, politics, land, and identity. This presentation therefore starts by briefly introducing the development of loyalism from the late 17th century to the early 20th. It then covers the varying manifestations of loyalism throughout the 20th century conflict known colloquially as ‘the Troubles’ (1968-1994) and through the post-ceasefire period of economic investment, mural reimaging, and emerging cultural discourses (1994 to present).
Public murals in Northern Ireland date to the early 20th century, and as such, this presentation traces their evolution as cultural symbols, territory markers, and representations of dissent within several subgroups of loyalism. The presentation utilizes essential texts on mural displays, the past and present conflict landscape of Belfast, while employing images of murals to elucidate key themes. Northern Irish loyalism makes a fascinating case study of identity construction within a conflict zone because it differs from many popular conceptions about what ‘conflict’ looks like internationally. Further examinations of loyalism also complicate narratives about ‘the Troubles’ and expose the diverse visual and cultural landscapes of contemporary Northern Ireland.
Materials and Resources for Dr. Hinson's Talk
Fitzduff and O’Hagan (2009) ‘The Northern Ireland Troubles: INCORE Background Paper’: https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/othelem/incorepaper09.htm
- Read sections: Introduction, Key Dates, The Creation of Northern Ireland, Green and Orange States, Civil Conflict, 1969, Paramilitaries, Why the Peace Process?
Speaker Information
Friday, November 13
Waking Up With 'Chu' - My Road to the Black Lives Matter Movement
Jerome 'Chu' Charles, multidisciplinary artist
Presentation Video
Join Jerome "Chu" Charles for a look into his life, his art, and personal journey that brought him to the Black Lives Matter Movement. This talk explores how street artists respond to local contexts as well as broader national developments that are reflected in their work.
Speaker Information
Jerome “Chu” Charles is a multidisciplinary artist who started out with whatever crafts his mother was involved in until his teens where he picked up photography, which led to an interest in graffiti, which in practice led to illustration and painting, which is currently servicing him in his pursuit of muraling and sign painting. As his abilities grow through practice, he also hopes to learn how to use his gifts to service the world at large, using his point of view as a gay Black man in a military family in America.
Teacher led session: Creative Resistance Case Studies for the K-12 Classroom
Michael-Ann Cerniglia, History Department Chair at Sewickley Academy
Presentation Video
This session examines the role that art and technology play in contemporary political movements around the world and how relevant case studies support curricular goals in the 7-12 classroom. By guiding students to examine politically motivated film, art, music, and digital communication, teachers can help students better understand how, throughout history, innovative ideas have sprung from censorship and repression which, over time, communicate goals and affect change.
Materials and Resources for Ms. Cerniglia's Talk
Presentation Slides PDF - Creative Resistance Case Studies for the K-12 Classroom
Speaker Information
Michael-Ann Cerniglia is the Senior School History Department Chair at Sewickley Academy, an independent school north of Pittsburgh, PA, where she teaches Grades 10-12 AP European history, AP US Government and Politics, and global studies electives. Most relevant to today's presentation, she developed and teaches a course called "Creative Resistance," which examines the convergence of art and politics. At school, she commits her time to curriculum, equity and inclusion initiatives, student clubs, and professional development opportunities that present themselves. Michael-Ann is passionate about global experiences in teaching, literature, film, technology, communication, and travel. She resides in Pittsburgh, PA with her husband and two daughters.
