Column: Engaging with art can mean engaging with activism

Editor’s note: Claire Drysdale is a guest columnist who was invited to write a column on this topic.

Ever since President Trump’s election, issues surrounding race, class and gender have been playing heavily on our national conscience.

However, our ability to have constructive, open dialogue about these issues has not always caught up with our need to have such discussions.

In times like these, art frequently lends coherency to lived experience, a fact I was recently reminded of when I attended a campus iteration of The Black Lunch Table, a social practice venture started by UNC studio art professor Jina Valentine.

Social practice is a participatory art form that leverages artists and communities against societal and political ills.

With a focus on people over objects, social practice borrows strategies from performance, investigative journalism and environmental advocacy to achieve its aims.

While social practice isn’t new — for example, artists were transforming Chicago buildings into cultural centers decades ago — it’s currently having a big moment in the art world.

Perhaps more than any other art form, social practice pushes the boundary between art and life. For instance, in the exhibition “pad thai,” the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija transformed a New York City art gallery into a kitchen and served up free Thai food to the public.

Yet this blurring is precisely the point. As the demand that artists and arts institutions demonstrate civic accountability grows louder, drawing a hard line between art and activism not only seems arbitrary, but irresponsible.

The Black Lunch Table project, whose name and structure is borrowed from lunchroom phenomena, uses food and conversation as a catalyst for social change.

Participants are seated at tables curated to represent a variety of ages, genders and races and given a deck of playing cards.

Instead of a queen or king, each card has a question probing issues as diverse as gerrymandering, police brutality and political representation.

For sixty minutes, participants draw cards and discuss the issues. The conversations are recorded and archived in a cultural database that artists and academics are invited to draw on.

I was surprised by how easily I could talk with the perfect strangers I was seated with. Emboldened by our relative anonymity, we spoke candidly about Silent Sam, the North Carolina voter ID law and racial profiling by police officers in Durham.

However, one question did give my all-white table pause: “How does your race impact your daily physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing?”

Referencing Frederick Douglass’ wisdom that slavery dehumanizes masters as much as their slaves, one person tentatively suggested that in a society where oppression is permissible, those who benefit materially from this system also suffer spiritually.

While I assumed that this question didn’t apply to me, I left with a sense of my stake in the battle for equality.

In its best form, art de-normalizes life by calling attention to what we take for granted.

We didn’t reach any grand solutions in one hour, but as I walked to my next class, I felt optimistic that America’s current state isn’t destined to be our normal.