Art Activism Quotes

How does art make a difference?
A selection of art activism quotes to explore the purpose of protest art and artivism. Consider that all quotes are biased extract of longer thoughts.

Keep in mind that a quote is a biased extract of longer thoughts. Do some research and dig into the sources.

Chase Purdy

“Artists stopped showing us the truth about farming and it’s hurting the planet. Art is a reflection of humanity. It helps us understand ourselves—our beauty and our scars—and also the world in which we live. There’s nothing picturesque about how most people are fed today, but you wouldn’t know it from our grocery packaging, or from popular culture, or from the myths we’ve created in our own minds about where our food comes from.” . “Where are the artists? We need them.”

✒Chase Purdy, Food Writer for Quartz

Coco Fusco

“How the art world deals with this notion of activism and art is always cast in a very negative light. Always, it's always framed as propagandistic and insufficiently sophisticated to constitute a valid aesthetic experience. If you're going to do activism then you're going to make something simple that is not going to have a long life.”
(...)
“There isn't a positive interpretive discourse in art for activist engagement. Because even to call something activist engagement is to give it a kind of functionalist cast. And for art to be art in aesthetic theory it has to be disassociated from use-value, it’s only exchange value, it's only symbolic value.”
✒ Coco Fusco ”The Art of Decolonization”
Youtube FFT Düsseldorf
June 10, 2017

Irene inchaurrandieta

Artist
"These projects require so much money that the only people and institutions capable of doing them are of course the ones who are harming the environment."
✒ The Ambaradan Think Tank, 2022- YouTube

Jude Kelly

Theatre director
“An artist must also be an activist – aesthetically, morally, or philosophically. That doesn’t mean they have to demonstrate in street protests, but rather deal with these issues through a so-called artistic language. Without that kind of consciousness – to be blind to human struggle – one cannot even be called an artist.”
✒ The Guardian – Interview (2020)

Libre Gutierrez

Artist
"It's easy for artists to talk about (issues), but they don't propose shit"
✒ Interview by Tyce Vande Berg, December 2024

Nikkolas Smith

Artist and illustrator
“I describe artivism as using my art as a way to grab people’s attention and inspire them to make a positive change. … It has a goal of looking at what’s going on in the world that’s broken, and highlighting that broken thing, then trying to get people to wake up and say, ‘Oh, maybe I can do something about it.’”
✒ People – Voices Against Racism, 2020

Shirin Neshat

Artist and filmmaker
“I never wanted to make political art. My work is politically charged because of the life that I have lived and because many of my collaborators, most of us, are living in exile. So a lot of the subjects are informed by issues that we face as people. And it made me think a lot about Western artists as opposed to non-western artists such as myself, how we take certain risks in different parts of the world. But for us, it’s the risk of our lives. It’s arrest, it’s torture, it’s execution. And I think for the westerners, where you live in a more democratic society, you have the freedom of expression, so the risk that you might take is the influence it might have on your career”
✒ Interview Magazine – Performa Biennial conversation, 2023