The art activism poster project we have been working on for the last week is a perfect example of how art can contribute to our society. Through the research done about our social justice issues and the creation of posters that send an important social message, this project has been a great way to get us to relate artwork to the world around us.
It was interesting to learn from my peers about the social justice issue they chose, as well as their motivation for voicing it and the ways in which they represented the issue visually. By sharing our own topics with the class, I feel like we all had important reflective learning experiences, since we were taking time to think more critically about the social issues important to our peers.
Throughout this art making process, I continuously came back to the idea of this project as a #layering process. From beginning to end, we gradually built up our ideas, concepts, and visual representations in the poster and the final video. The base layer was our personal reflection about social justice issues important to us, the second layer was additional research to inform our poster ideas, the third layer was the printmaking process (which in itself involved a tremendous amount of layering and planning), and the fourth layer was transferring our poster into a public space using the video editing tool. The entire progression was a huge learning experience, especially since I had never worked with printmaking or Adobe After Effects.
My approach to this project was inspired by the fact that the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) is affecting people from my culture, my home, and people I know. The fact that this issue is victimizing a specific group of people based on race and gender is infuriating and disgusting. I have personally witnessed injustices against Native people and by Native people from my own reservation that went unpenalized and unaccounted for. After learning more about the nationwide MMIW crisis, I was able to look at those incidents more critically and opened my eyes to the reason for those injustices, which are primarily racial.
I connected this trend of injustices and tragedies to the historical trend of Indigenous people getting things taken from them; for hundreds of years, Indigenous people have had their culture, their customs, clothing, food, land, and their own people stolen from them. Although I didn’t think about it this way before, I am now realizing that this trend still continues. Through the disregard for Native women's’ lives, the lack of media attention, and lack of action, the stealing still continues today. Native women are not just going missing, they are being stolen and having their lives taken from.
Here is my awareness poster for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women:
