Art must play an active role in politics and in geography. Artists often relegate themselves to galleries or studios, commenting on politics through their work while residing in a privatized space.
The geographic separation between artists and the public diminishes the possibility for public engagement with art itself.
Art’s meaning is produced through an encounter with the audience, yet the placement of art within galleries and museums often acts to separate the audience from art.
Art must enter into the public sphere to be truly political. At UNC, public art should interrogate the accessibility of our University.
Despite the moniker of public university, UNC has become a privatized space as corporations assume more university functions.
Public space is increasingly policed through campus security, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing apps. Art can interrogate these spatial transformations, but only if it takes place in the public sphere.
The medium of public space therefore functions as part of art itself. Public art’s ability to exist, and the speed at which it is dismantled, becomes part of its commentary, revealing the public and private forces that act on the space itself.
Politically engaged public art brings political conversations into the public sphere. Political conversations are too often nothing more than echo chambers. Public art provides a lightning rod for conversations between people of different backgrounds.
Public art opens up a space for conversation that rarely exists. This space works against the force of privatization — a subtle, politically charged force that alters the places and ways in which we can have political conversations.
