How Artists Can Lead a Pandemic Recovery
Artists can help us emerge and heal from the global pandemic — but first we have to create more systems that support them and their work.
The “In America: Remember” public art installation in Washington, D.C., commemorated Americans who have died due to Covid-19. The installation, a concept by artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg, featured more than 650,000 small plastic flags planted in 20 acres of the National Mall.
Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images North AmericaThe last two years have contained an overwhelming number of crises and traumas — both structural and personal, global and local. Most of us are experiencing imaginative exhaustion. It is hard to believe that people and systems can change, that the future can be better than the present.
This is where art comes in. Change is an act of creation, and that’s what artists do: Through a process of imagining, trying and building, artists create experiences that connect us to our own agency and power. We are in a moment when we urgently need these artists, culture bearers and creative workers who can help us envision and build a future of justice, health and wholeness.